Hindi
Disney UTV Studio to pitch Barfi, Paan Singh Tomar at various intl film fests
MUMBAI: Disney UTV Studios‘s Barfi and Paan Singh Tomar (PST) will compete in various festivals across the globe as the Oscars, BAFTA ( British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and Golden Globe awards in various categories.
After receiving critical acclaim and commercial success in India and abroad, the films, considered to be among the best of 2012, are expected to garner major international awards.
Said Disney UTV Managing Director Studios managing director Siddharth Roy Kapur, "We have ensured both the movies get the best platform possible to shine at all the key international awards this year. We have leveraged the strong relationships, resources and experience of The Walt Disney Company in the US and the UK to mount an aggressive campaign at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTA."
Barfi and PST are great ambassadors of the current generation of Indian cinema. We are proud to have produced them and to have helped them reach as wide an audience as possible globally."
Barfi, India‘s official entry to the Oscars this year, will compete with 70 movies from across the world to clinch a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It is also in the race for a Golden Globe nomination in the same category.
At BAFTA, PST and Barfi will compete in mainstream categories like best actor, best actress, best director, best cinematography, best sound, best screenplay and best film in Foreign Language (other than English).
They have also been submitted for the Critics‘ Choice Awards 2013, to vie for a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film Category.
As part of its campaign, Disney UTV Studios have already begun screenings of both the movies in London, Los Angeles and New York.
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.
