Hindi
Five Indian films to be screened at Hollywood CineFest
NEW DELHI: Indian films After Ever After by Rakesh Kumar has been selected for the Hollywood International CineFest being held this month.
In addition, Akshay Prem Vyas’s debut feature Kaaya (Hindi) and Nilesh Batra’s Rainbow Fields (Asamese) are competing in the Best Feature (Foreign) category. The festival, scheduled to be held on Saturday and Sunday, at AMC Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, received over 400 submissions.
The lineup includes World Premieres of After Ever After & Easy Money and the North America Premieres of Before The Fall (Cambodia’s entry to 2017 Oscars) & Sam Heughan’s Emulsion.
In Rakesh Kumar’s debut feature After Ever After, the protagonist, Nik Patel struggles to cope with the terminal illness of his nine-year-old daughter. A chance encounter with an Alzheimer patient helps him come to terms with the harsh realities of life.
Based on his personal experiences, the film is a story of human endurance against insurmountable odds. Rakesh Kumar was born in the northern state of Bihar and, for him, life never was a fairytale — as we understand it.
“All human beings are born fighters and true fighters pick up the sword even when defeat is nearly certain,” Rakesh said.
The 2017 line up includes films from America, UK, India, France,China, South Korea, Cambodia and Hong Kong.
Hollywood International CineFest was founded with the goal of connecting independent film-makers with distributors.
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.
