Hindi
Goa gets its groove on as IFFIESTA turns IFFI into a festival within a festival
MUMBAI: Goa’s biggest film celebration is about to add a little more fiesta to its IFFI. This November, the International Film Festival of India is set to widen its cultural canvas with IFFIESTA 2025, a four-day burst of music, rhythm, and live performance that promises to make the country’s flagship film festival sound as vibrant as it looks.
Presented by Doordarshan and curated under WAVES Culturals & Concerts, IFFIESTA will run from 21st to 24th November 2025, lighting up Goa’s Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Auditorium every evening from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. With partners including Saregama, MJ Films, and Dilli Gharana, the showcase brings together everything from classical precision to indie spirit and a stage designed to celebrate India’s creative heartbeat.
If IFFI brings the cinema, IFFIESTA brings the soundtrack.
The festival kicks off on 21st November with Osho Jain Live in Concert, the only ticketed event in the four-day lineup. Tickets will be available exclusively via District by Zomato, setting a concert tone before the showcase shifts to free cultural programming.
From 22nd to 24th November, the auditorium opens its doors to everyone.
IFFIESTA will feature:
● Battle of Bands — Indian and international groups competing for sonic glory
● Suron Ka Eklavya — a talent showcase spotlighting raw musical skill
● Waah Ustad — a vocal performance platform for rising singers
● Devanchal ki Prem Katha — a special presentation on 23rd November
Each evening will also be helmed by a celebrity host, adding a dose of star power to the already spirited schedule.
Saregama will present special artist segments each night, further blending legacy sound with new-age performance.
IFFIESTA isn’t just entertainment; it’s strategy. The showcase aligns closely with the vision of WAVES Culturals & Concerts, which aims to strengthen India’s growing creative and live economy by building platforms where new voices can be discovered, collaborations can be sparked, and performance culture can be made more accessible.
Whether it’s indie musicians finding audiences, classical artists gaining new admirers, or young performers stepping onto a national stage for the first time, the four-day programme attempts to spotlight the next chapter of India’s live-arts movement.
For a festival rooted in cinema, IFFIESTA adds something deeply cinematic of its own emotion, energy, and the thrill of performance. By pairing film with music, artistry with accessibility, and established names with rising stars, IFFI 2025 looks set to offer not just screenings but a scene.
Because this year in Goa, the magic won’t end when the credits roll, it will take the stage.
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.
