Hindi
3 Indian films to premiere at Dubai International Film Festival
MUMBAI: With the film festival season on film lovers have one more option to catch some of the finest films of world cinema.
Indian films too couldn’t have asked for better. Cannes may be one of the best platforms for Indian films but now for those who miss the flight to France can take one which is closer home, Dubai. The 4th Dubai Film Festival kickstarts on 9 December and culminates on 16 December. Leading Indian filmmakers and actors will be present at the event.
Three of the films in the Celebration of Indian Cinema segment are scheduled for their World Premieres: Naseeruddin Shah will bring Shoot on Sight, a taut thriller in which he plays a Scotland Yard Inspector investigating a police shooting of an alleged terrorist.
Director Remo D’Souza will present his Story of the Red Hills, about a broken-hearted Bengali Chhou dancer who finds a new lease on life through his love of the art form.
And DIFF audiences will be the first to see Kabir Bedi and director Akbar Khan present the Director’s Cut of Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story.
The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) will host a record number of World Premieres this year-16 shorts, documentaries and features from all over the world, including the Middle East, India and Africa.
Yet another film scheduled to premiere is Jagmohan Mundra’s Shoot on Sight. Director Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s 4 Women dealing with the issue of matrimony in the lives of four women from different social classes will also be seen at the festival.
This year’s segment ‘A celebration of Indian cinema’ will host seven films. Mira Nair’s acclaimed film AIDS JaaGo will also be screened during 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.
