Hindi
Box Office: ‘Sanam Re’ collections triumph over ‘Fitoor’ in opening weekend
MUMBAI: It has been a dull week and the exhibition trade is at the receiving end despite two films to distribute screens to. T-Series Sanam Re pipped the Aditya Roy Kapur – Katrina Kaif starrer Fitoor at the box office in the opening weekend.
Sanam Re, a film with no story or script to back it and counting only on its musical score and hearty promotion (after all, it is a T-Series production), does not stir up excitement in the Valentine’s Day weekend as was expected. With the low figure on Friday, the film remained almost static on Saturday. However, boasting of popular music, the film did cash in on Sunday, 14 February, to show a decent improvement. The film ended its opening weekend with figures of Rs 16.3 crore.
Fitoor, where the trade and exhibitors, especially multiplexes, had some expectations because of a decent past record of the director, Abhishek Kapoor, proved to be a pretentious and messed up script borrowed from Charles Dickens’ classic, Great Expectations. A lot of things have been grossly mixed up and confuse the viewer. The casting was a huge mismatch with only Tabu making a mark in a role, which was not really complementary to her reputation. The film improved only slightly on Saturday and Sunday but not enough to matter. It ended its first weekend with a figure of Rs 13.2 crore.
Ghayal Once Again has not been able to make much of a mark. Old fashioned theme with treatment to match and a bad casting hurt the film hugely. With its opening weekend of Rs 21.2 crore, the film just about managed to stay afloat through rest of the week to collect Rs 33.1 crore in its first week.
Sanam Teri Kasam, a hackneyed love story about cancer playing the villain in the romance of a young couple, being a done to death theme, fails to garner audience interest. With its opening weekend of Rs 3.8 crore, it does not add much to the kitty in the remaining four days and ends the opening week with Rs 7.25 crore.
BHK Bhalla@Halla.com remains a nonstarter.
Saala Khadoos gets a piece of the pie due to poor opposition to add Rs 1.9 crore in its second week thus taking its two week tally to Rs 10.1 crore.
Mastizaade collects Rs 1.05 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs 18.7 crore.
Airlift continues to hold its sway at the box office with excellent figures in its third week. The film added a handsome Rs 10.8 crore for its third week taking its three week tally to a healthy Rs 122.1 crore.
Kyaa Kool Hain Hum comes to the end of its run with figures of Rs 20 lakh in its third week to take its three week total to Rs 27 crore.
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.
