Hindi
‘Court’ once again wins accolades on the international circuit
NEW DELHI: Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court, which has been on a winning streak for the past few months, has now won the FIPRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics) Prize at the Vienna International Film Festival (Viennale).
In the citation, the jury said: “This film is a quietly sophisticated, emotionally restrained yet hugely affecting account of the politics, incompetence and casual corruption of the Indian justice system, which has a universal resonance. While focused on legal procedure, glimpses into the everyday lives of the protagonists add depth and surprising humour to the iniquities within the court.”
This is director and writer Chaitanya Tamhane’s first film.
Court recently won the Golden Gateway award for Best Film, Best Director and Jury Special Mention for Ensemble Cast at the 16th Mumbai Film Festival. Besides, it also won the Turkish Film Critics’ Association (SIYAD) award for the Best Film at 51st International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.
A folk singer who sings about social ills is charged with abetting the alleged suicide of a BMC worker and thrown into judicial custody. What follows is an acidic satire that shows the absurdity of the Indian legal system and society’s callousness with elegant savagery. Court manages to talk about everything from the need for judicial reform to freedom of expression without ever turning preachy or becoming self-indulgent. The cast is made up of theatre actors and non-actors who comfortably slip between Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and English.
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.
