Hindi
IFFI 2025: India pitches itself as the world’s film factory
GOA: India wants to be Hollywood’s back lot—and everywhere else’s too. At an ambassadors’ roundtable in Goa today, officials made their pitch: diverse locations, cheap talent, cutting-edge VFX studios, and a market poised to hit $31.6bn next year. The message to diplomats from Cuba, Nepal, Israel, Australia, Ireland and five other nations was clear: co-produce with us.
The session at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) explored bilateral treaties, regulatory fixes and ways to tap India’s “multilingual talent pool.” Ministry of information and broadcasting secretary Sanjay Jaju framed India as the “studio of the world, where global stories can be imagined, produced, and shared.” He pointed delegates towards Waves Film Bazaar, IFFI’s deal-making platform, where co-production partnerships take shape.
Minister of state for information and broadcasting L Murugan, who chaired the talks, called co-production “the most powerful avenue” for audiovisual cooperation. He touted India’s growing prowess in animation and VFX, and promised simpler permissions and smoother movement of talent across borders. He also flagged India’s anti-piracy push—backed by inter-ministerial muscle from the ministries of electronics, home affairs and law—as proof the country can protect content.
Shruti Rajkumar, a consultant at the National Film Development Corp, laid out India’s anti-piracy framework, detailing tech tools and policies designed to stop digital leaks before they start.
Diplomats nodded along, expressing interest in India’s tech strengths and creative workforce. The 56th edition of IFFI, running until November 28 against Goa’s coastal backdrop, is positioning itself as more than a festival—it’s a marketplace where India hopes to turn cultural exchange into hard currency.
Whether the world’s filmmakers bite remains to be seen. But India’s bet is straightforward: offer scale, savings and skill, and the cameras will follow.
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.
