Hindi
Zee Studios International’s Secret Superstar hits it big in Taiwan
Zee Studios International has collected $700,681 from its release of Aamir Khan-starrer Secret Superstar in Taiwan, making the movie the widest Bollywood film in the country. The film, which also features Zaira Wasim, lit up the box office in India.
The distribution company began the next phase of the international release for the film by opening in a key territory, Taiwan, on 24 November 2017 across 73 screens, a record for an Indian film in the Chinese-speaking territory.
Vibha Chopra, head – Zee Studios International (film marketing, distribution and acquisition), said, “Content is what wins hearts worldwide and Secret Superstar, which is heavy on content, is proof of that. So much so that it is the widest Bollywood film release in Taiwan. We are happy to see how positively international markets are reacting to the film.”
After releasing across markets such as the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, UAE, Pakistan, Turkey, Malta, Hungary, and the rest of the world, Secret Superstar is serving as a bellwether for Zee Studios International and Aamir Khan Productions.
“Given that Secret Superstar has connected with various audiences across the globe, we are excited to see how well the film does in the coming months in other territories as well,” she added.
In the movie, Wasim plays a teenage girl named Insia who dreams of becoming a singer. The film is about how she fulfils her dreams by keeping her identity hidden.
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.
