Hindi
Akshay Kumar & Ashvini Yardi to release Fugly on 16 May 2014
NEW DELHI: After the success of their first venture OMG: Oh My God!, actor Akshay Kumar and Ashvini Yardi are all set to release Fugly, a coming-of-age drama set in the by lanes of Delhi.
The film’s release date has just been announced as 16 May 2014.
Produced by the Grazing Goat Pictures and directed by Kabir Sadanand, Fugly is shot extensively in Delhi and the breathtaking locations of Leh. It is the story of four friends – Dev, Devi, Gaurav and Aditya and how this carefree bunch, at the threshold of their lives, get caught in a Fugly incident, which sucks them slowly into the big bad world of corruption, politics and the real society in the capital.
The central characters are played by an ensemble of some of the freshest faces to emerge from India: Anil Kapoor’s nephew Mohit Marwah, Olympic medalist Boxer Vijender Singh, grand niece of Sayed Jaffery Kiara Advani and Slumdog Millionaire actor Arti Lamba will make their Bollywood debuts in the film. The film also sees the fondly remembered Anjali, from the 1998 blockbuster, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Sana Saeed, in a special song and Jimmy Shergill who returns to the big screen after Bullet Raja.
With Fugly, Akshay and Ashvini have followed up the huge success of their first film venture, OMG: Oh My God, and their regional successes, the critically acclaimed Marathi film 72 Miles Ek Pravas, and the Punjabi comic-caper ‘Bhaji in Problem’.
Spearheading investment into quality, subject-driven film-making, Grazing Goat Pictures is taking Hindi and regional cinema to new heights with a range of innovative and fresh projects.
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.
