Hindi
Extravagant India awards in Paris was nothing short of extravagant
NEW DELHI: Lunch Box by Ritesh Batra, which missed the Indian selection to the Oscars by a whisker, was voted the best film at the Extravagant India awards in Paris.
Path-breaking filmmaker Anurag Kashyap received the best director award for his film Ugly, which is also being featured in a retrospective of his films in Europe as part of the Europalia.India Festival.
 |
The late Rituparno Ghosh, who passed away earlier this year, was named best actor for his own film Chitrangada.
Actress Vidya Balan received the best actress award for The Dirty Picture by Milan Luthria and Kahaani by Sujoy Ghosh.
The Festival was held from 16 to 22 October in Paris. The jury for the feature films comprised Coline Serreau (director and President of the jury), Armand Amar (composer), Joël Farges (producer).
The best documentary award went to Children of the Pyre by Rajesh S Jala while the renowned Pan Nalin’s film Faith Connection got a special jury mention.
The Jury for documentaries comprised Euzhan Palcy (director and President of the jury), Charlotte Uzu (Les Fims d’ici), and Claude Gilaizeau (Productions de la Lanterne).
 |
The film Allah is Great by Andrea Iannetta, which was produced by the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, won the Best Short film award.
The Jury for short films was Jean-Charles Mille (distribution Premium Films – President of the jury), Abel Jafry (actor), and Benoit Blanchard (producer).
The Feature Jury president Coline Serreau said: “The selection was fascinating, rich and diverse. We plunged into the movies with delight, and with the feeling to approach and to discover this boiling continent, in which all the contradictions of the world in future are at work.”
He added: “I hope that the Indian cinema will take from now on its just place in the French public. Long life to this festival, whose 2014 edition, I would love to already know.”
Euzhan Palcy said: “This first edition of the Festival offered us an Indian cinema of a high quality and which participates of the cultural diversity which the world needs. By supporting this festival, France will continue to play its leader’s role for the cultural diversity.”
Happiness Distribution is distributing Batra’s film in France on 13 December, while Kashyap’s film will be released in France in March 2014.
Sophie Dulac Distribution will distribute Faith Connection by Pal Nalin under the title Kumbh Mela, Les chemins de la Foi.
The Indian Delegation comprised Irrfan Khan (actor in Lunchbox), Prakash Jha (director of Raajneeti), Sujoy Gosh (director of Kahaani), Rajesh S. Jala (director of Children of the Pyre, Andrea Ianneta (director of Allah is Great), Film Federation of India President Bijay Khemka and Secretary General Supran Sen, Manoj Srivastava who is Head of Bollywood the film City project Marwan, Ranvir Nayar who is Director of Media India, Sutapa Sikdar (scriptwriter), and Ramesh Tekwani, President of “Docs & Shorts”.
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.
