Hindi
As ‘Gully Boy’ completes five years, Zoya Akhtar shares her favourite scene with IMDb
Mumbai: Zoya Akhtar’s directorial Gully Boy, inspired by the lives of Indian street rappers DIVINE and Naezy, has reached a significant milestone, celebrating five years of release. The film stars Ranveer Singh as Murad Ahmed, a final-year college student who resides in the Dharavi slums of Mumbai, nurturing a passion for underground rap music. Alongside Singh, the film features Alia Bhatt, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Kalki Koechlin, Vijay Varma, Amruta Subhash, and Vijay Raaz.
In a recent conversation with IMDb marking the five-year anniversary of Gully Boy, Akhtar discussed her favourite scene from the film and highlighted Ranveer’s character, Murad’s predicament of being denied access to certain places in the city. She expressed, “When he (Murad) gets a job as a driver, he’s always seen outside the bungalow. When he drives the lady of the house for a night out, he stands outside the club. He can’t even be near the door. He only has access to the government hospital or the college where he’s a student.”
Elaborating and dissecting Murad’s journey as an artist, she added, “As he evolves as an artist, his access expands. This is the first time he enters the home of someone like Sky (Kalki Koechlin). He’s never been to those high-rise apartments. He finds himself in her restroom and can’t help but notice that it’s the size of his entire home.”
Akhtar also shared insights into the challenges faced while filming this particular scene, mentioning how she struggled to find a suitable location and reached out to her friend Suzanne Khan for assistance. Khan provided a show flat she had designed for a building, where they ultimately shot the scene. Reflecting on the process, Akhtar said, “During rehearsals, we realised there was no running water. So we improvised, starting the scene with him (Singh) wiping his hands. Ranveer improvised by neatly placing the hand towel back, which touched my heart because he didn’t want to disrupt the perfection of the space. Then he proceeds to measure the room, unable to believe that someone has a restroom in their home as big as his entire house. To me, that encapsulates everything—the divide, the disparity, the unfairness. It’s everything.”
Excerpt of Zoya Akthar’s conversation with IMDb:
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.
