Hindi
‘Chaarfutiya Chhokare’ to be premiered in Dubai
NEW DELHI:The bollywood film ‘Chaarfutiya Chhokre’ directed by Manish Harishankar will have its premiere in Dubai on 24 September.
The film is presented by Wave Cinemas, Ponty Chadha, and Maxor Movies, in association with Raju Chadha. It will be released on 600 screens all over the world. The cast and crew are all set to leave for promotional tours all over India.
The film stars Soha Ali Khan, Seema Biswas, Mukesh Tawari, and Zakir Hussian in the main roles. The music is by Abhijeet-Sameer and Sudeep Banerjee and the singers are by Sharda Sinha, Malini Awasthi, Sudeep Banerjee, and Vibha Dutta Khosla. T-Series releases the audio of the film.
Chaarfutiya Chhokare is a Hindi social thriller on the subject of child-trafficking. The plot revolves around Neha Malini who is an NRI girl returning to India in order to start a school in a village in north Bihar.
Starting off optimistic and happy about her endeavour, she is unaware of the hardships, obstructions and risks awaiting her in this small, serene village. She is pleased after meeting three boys Awadhesh, Hari and Gorakh but soon finds out that it is the beginning of a nightmare.
Being hardcore criminals, these three boys become the centre of her activities. After seeing this, she vows to stop the criminal and sexual exploitation of the children in the village. Her meeting with Janaki (Seema Biswas) – the mother of one of the boys, Awadhesh – helps her understand the deeply embedded political-criminal nexus that pervades the system. Neha is resolute to free the three of them from this world of crime.
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.
