Hindi
Gangs of Wasseypur kicks off IFFLA
NEW DELHI: Anurag Kashyap‘s ‘Gang of Wasseypur‘ was the opening film at the 11th Annual Indian Film festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood.
"Gangs of Wasseypur" had also been screened in Cannes last year in the ‘Directors Fortnight‘ section.
The festival has included a sneak preview of Mira Nair‘s new political thriller ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist‘ (with an international cast running from Kiefer Sutherland to Shabana Azmi) and the festival will close with Deepa Mehta‘s cinematic translation of Salman‘s Rushdie‘s novel ‘Midnight‘s Children‘ starring Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, and Anupam Kher.
The festivalwill also pay a tribute to ‘King of Romance‘ director Yash Chopra that includes his last venture ‘Jab Tak hai Jaan‘ along with other hits like ‘Chandni‘, ‘Silsila‘, and ‘Kabhi Kabhie‘.
Other films at the festival include ‘Filmistaan‘ – debut feature by Nitin Kakkar – and ‘Eega‘ a Telugu language resurrection drama which is loosely based on the film ‘Makhii‘.
A full length documentary, ‘Celluloid Man‘ on the living legend P K Nair who brought film archiving to India as the founder of the National Film Archive of India will also be screened at the IFFLA this year.
Other short films include ‘Tatpaschat‘, ‘Dosa Hunt‘, ‘Here and away‘, ‘Homecoming‘, ‘The queen of my dreams‘, ‘Rags to Pads‘, ‘Recurrence‘, Vasan Bala‘s ‘Peddlers‘, Hansal Mehta‘s ‘Shahid‘, and Anand Gandhi‘s ‘Ship of Theseus‘.
There are two discussion sessions. The first is ‘Laughing At Ourselves- A Conversation with Actors and Creatives‘ with Kunal Nayyar (actor, Big Bang Theory), Hannah Simone (actor, New Girl), Sarayu Rao (actor, Monday Mornings), Luvh Rakhe (writer, New Girl), and Sunil Nayar (executive producer, Revenge), and moderated by Parvesh Cheena (actor, Outsourced).
The second panel is on "Today‘s Pioneer Voices Changing the Landscape of Indian Cinema" moderated by Lisa Tsering (The Hollywood Reporter), and featuring Vasan Bala, Anand Gandhi, Hansal Mehta and Nitin Kakkar.
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.
