Hindi
13th European Union Film Festival in India in April
NEW DELHI: Twenty-one well-known contemporary films from 19 European countries are to be screened at the 13th European Union (EU) Film Festival, which is being held in five Indian cities during April.
European Union member states embassies and the Delegation of the European Commission are collaborating with a number of local partners to organise the festival in New Delhi (1-8 April), Chennai (7-17 April), Kolkata (10-16 April), Calicut/Kozhikode (17-20 April) and Pune (24-30 April).
In this edition of the EU Film Festival, the diversity in the contemporary European film industry is showcased through an array of films, each representing a different member state that includes national and international hits with gripping thrillers, finger-on-the-pulse comedies and forceful modern-day dramas.
The festival is now part of the EU-India strategic partnership established at the 6th EU-India Summit in September 2005. The films being screened have been widely acclaimed in Europe and some have been awarded prestigious prizes in recent years. Only Belgium has two films.
The films that will be screened are Short Circuits (Slovenia), I Am (Poland), Kids in da Hood (Sweden), FC Venus (Finland), Waiter (the Netherlands), On the Other Side of the Bridge (Austria), Yella (Germany), After the Wedding (Denmark), It‘s Spring in Prague Every Year (Czech Republic), Two Syllables Behind (Slovak Republic), You and Me (France), Ultranova and Long Weekend (Belgium), Eighth Day of the Week (Hungary), Last of the High Kings (Ireland), Golden Beach (Estonia), Occident (Romania), Bye Bye Blackbird (Luxembourg), Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive (UK), Honey and Wine (Cyprus) and Fiction (Spain).
The festival is being staged in collaboration with the government of NCT of Delhi, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; Nandan, the West Bengal Film Centre, Kolkata; Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, Kozhikode; National Film Archive of India, Pune and ICA Foundation in Association with South India Film Chamber of Commerce, Chennai.
The union hopes to emphasise the importance of culture, particularly in light of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. Its relations with India encompass a dialogue between modern nation states built upon ancient civilisations, enriched with myriad cultures, religions, ethnicities and languages, says an EU release.
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.
