Hindi
APSA nominates Band Baaja Baarat in ‘Best Feature Film’ category
MUMBAI: The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) organizers have nominated YRF’s Band Baaja Baaraat for this year’s awards. The film is among the 37 films from 19 countries that have been nominated.
This was disclosed by APSA 2011 International Jury President, Hong Kong film producer Nansun Shi at the Busan International Film Festival.
The films that have been nominated in the ‘Best Feature Film’ category are Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (A Separation, Islamic Republic of Iran), Rang zidan fei (Let the Bullets Fly, People’s Republic of China – Mainland China / Hong Kong), Bé Omid É Didar (Goodbye, Islamic Republic of Iran), Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina) besides Band Baaja Baaraat (Wedding Planners, India).
A Separation by Asghar Farhadi and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia written and directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan has each received four APSA nominations. Both films are the Academy Award submissions for their respective countries in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for next year.
Goodbye by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has received three APSA nominations. Rasoulof received the award for ‘Best Director’ in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Let the Bullets Fly, written and directed by Jiang Wen, has received two APSA nominations. It is said to be the highest grossing domestic film in history at the Chinese box office.
A total of 240 films entered in this year’s competition. The winners will be announced at the ceremony on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, on 24 November.
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.
