Hindi
10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival to judge 6 competitive sections
MUMBAI: The 10th Osian‘s-Cinefan Film Festival has announced the members of the six juries who will judge the competitive sections this year. The festival, which commences from 10 July and runs till 20 July, will be held in New Delhi.
These six juries comprise 22 individuals that include directors, screenwriters, actors and cinematographers from the international film community.
The members will preside over the awards selection for the films in competition and decide the winners in four categories namely Asian & Arab, Indian, First Features and In-Tolerance. The juries of NETPAC and FIPRESCI will announce the lifetime achievement awards.
The six juries for the 10th Osian‘s-Cinefan Festival are:
Asian Arab – President of the Jury – Christine Hakim (Indonesia), Chantal Akerman (Belgium), Wu Nien-jen (Taiwan), Kais al Zibaidi (Palestine) and Ketan Mehta (India).
Indian Competition – Rada Sesic (Netherlands), Jeffrey Jeturian (Philippines), Sai Paranjpye (India), Abolfazal Jalili (Iran) and Mohammad Bakri (Israel).
First Features – Tony Rayns (UK), Nagesh Kukunoor (India) and Vimukthi Jayasundara (Sri Lanka).
In-Tolerance – Saed Ebrahimifar (Iran), Bappaditya Bandopadhyay (India) and Gonul Donmez-Colin (Turkey)
Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) – Martine Therouanne (France), Ed Lejano (Philippines) and Arun Khopkar (India)
Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI) – Adrienne Mc Kibbins (Australia), Mohammad Gallaoui (Morocco) and Meena Karnik (India)
“This year, as in the previous years, we have a very fine line-up for juries,” says Osian‘s-Cinefan joint festival director Latika Padgaonkar.
Osian‘s-Cinefan, organised by Osian‘s Connoisseurs of Art in association with the Government of the NCT of Delhi, will give away approximately $250, 000 in prize money for its competition Sections and lifetime achievement awards.
Of the four competitive sections, the In-Tolerance section has been added this year and will include films that “grapple with themes and stories centering on the intolerance of our times and on efforts made to combat or overcome it.”
“We have a great collection of films – the best of the most recent from Asia and the Arab world and a few classics which have never been seen in India before,” states Osian‘s-Cinefan joint festival director Indu Shrikent.
The awards will be announced on the evening of 19 July at the closing ceremony of the festival.
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.
