Hindi
Ramchand Pakistani to compete in Tribeca Film Fest
NEW DELHI: Pakistani film Ramchand Pakistani, directed by Mehreen Jabbar, has been selected for the competition section of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film will also be screened at the Seattle Film Festival.
The film, slated for a simultaneous release in theaters pan India and Pakistan in August, is about a Pakistani Hindu boy and his father who accidentally cross the border into India from their village in Pakistan.
They end up spending five years in an Indian prison while the mother is left wondering about her husband‘s and son‘s whereabouts. The story aims to capture the plight of an eight-year old child who learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother while being held prisoner.
Javed, producer of Ramchand Pakistani, said at a press meet at the ongoing 10th OCFF that this was the first-ever Pakistani film to be shot in the Bhuj area of Gujarat . It also stars Rashid Farooqi, Fazal Hussain, Nouman Ijaz and Maria Wasti.
When asked about her experience with the film, Nandita Das said that she often forgot she was in a different country and behaved as she does when in her own home. “Human emotions are universal and so I had no difficulty to adjusting to working in Pakistan,” she added.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
