Hindi
Debutante director Somshukhlla makes her global mark with Sandcastle
MUMBAI: Sandcastle, a simple film with a complex message, written and directed by Indian debutante director Shomshukhlla has been nominated at several International Film Festivals including the Tenerife and London International Film Festival and screening in Hollywood LA Femme Fest.
The film is about the journey of a woman in modern India finding her identity. It will be screened at Hollywood’s LA Femme Film Festival at the Regal Stadium 14 La Live, and has been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Feature Film category at the London International Film Festival (LIFF) 2013. The film also had four nominations at the Tenerife International Film Festival 2013 in London on October 12, including nods for Best Feature Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography.
Some important and rather poignant messages are conjured up in this bright and beautiful journey of a woman building her life. The ending is settling and although the film has had its share of surreal moments, Sandcastle reads much like a wonderfully crafted manuscript.
“The film addresses the unsatisfied longings of a seemingly comfortable middle-class Indian woman. India is waking up to good stories, with substance, new voices, ideas and perspectives, redefining the lost glory of story-telling. I am lucky that I am getting to be a part of it,” says Somshuklla.
Sandcastle tells the story of Sheila, (Shahana Chatterjee) whose upper middle-class life in India isn’t as perfect as she hoped it would be. Sheila is a home-maker, an aspiring writer and loving mother. From an outsider’s perspective, it would seem like she has the perfect life. Her husband is a wealthy advertising maverick and she is part of the elite middle-class of Indian society. But like the shifting of the sands, is it all slipping through her fingers? How will she build her own dreams? In all that she has, does she really have a voice of her own?
The story of Sandcastle reflects one’s belief in the ability to build a perfect life. But even in perfection there is emptiness and wanting. What is perfect to one person is misery for another. The film focuses on contemporary women in urban India and the changes in society that have moulded these women as an independent and self directing force of nature. Shomshuklla shows two colliding worlds of fateful acceptance and feminine Indian independence and individuality.
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.
