Hindi
Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Bruno and Juliet’ added on Royal Stag platform
NEW DELHI: ‘Bruno and Juliet’, presented by Imtiaz Ali, and written & directed by Khawar Jamsheed, the latest addition to the Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films, depicts an unusual friendship and an unspoken love between two adorable dogs, Bruno and Juliet.
A St. Bernard raised within the safe walls of a big house, Bruno yearns for the world outside seeking freedom. In the other hand, lovable street dog Juliet, with no one to call her own, roams the streets in search of love. The two ultimately find companionship with each other. The film is a heart-melting story of two souls who desire to be together while everyone tries to separate them, inspired by Imtiaz Ali’s take on love.
With this film, renowned filmmaker, Imtiaz Ali joins the club of eminent Bollywood personalities who are now associated with Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films platform. Having signed a 3-film association, Imtiaz promises to deliver some original shorts with the platform, beginning with the charming story of Bruno and Juliet.
Over the last three years, the platform Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films has gained immense popularity and has become one of the most credible and celebrated short films platform in India.
It has released some of the most prodigious and award winning short films which truly reflect originality, imagination and perfection such as ‘Ahalya’, ‘Interior Café – Night’, ‘Ouch’, ‘Chutney’, ‘That Gusty Morning’, ‘Mumbai Varanasi Express’, ‘Khool Aali Chithi’ and ‘The School Bag.’
Pernod Ricard India assistant VP – marketing Raja Banerji said “Imtiaz represents new age Bollywood Filmmaking. Such partnerships are a testimony to the accelerated growth and success the platform has witnessed in the last 2 years. In line with the brand’s objective of make it perfect, we have always believed well-known Bollywood directors with their exclusive work will motivate aspiring directors to create original content for the platform in the future”
Themed on the philosophy of “Make it Perfect”, The Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films is a platform for aspiring directors to feature along with mainstream Bollywood directors while still chasing their creative energy to create a niche for themselves in the industry. The platform gives a credible stage to the storytellers to showcase their artistic creativity and reach out to their target audience through the digital world.
Ali said, “Bruno and Juliet is an unconventional love story of characters that are Dogs. The film explores the basic need of two lovers to unite, only in this film the lovers are dogs. Associating with Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films is certainly an incredible platform for aspiring filmmakers who want to explore their creative freedom.”
The wirter & director Khawar Jamsheed known Line Producer of Kashmir for his work in films like Haider, Rockstar, Highway and Bajrangi Bhaijaan etc said, “Bruno and Juliet is very special to me. It is about an unlikely friendship between two unlikely protagonists. I used to observe dogs in my neighbourhood closely and found their friendship very fascinating. So, I picked up my camera and started following the dogs filming them for 22 days. The Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films truly encourages and motivates filmmakers to exhibit their work perfectly.”
Royal stag Barrel Select Large Short Films (LSF) is a portal that is the hub of Indian short films. It gives the audience the window to enjoy short films made by large directors. It gives aspiring film makers a platform to showcase their short films with original ideas. Films from LSF has made big in Filmfare with three of its film made in in final shortlist. Chutney a LSF release has won 2 Filmfare awards. In recent times, Platform has been built on identified core attribute of RSBS – ‘Make it Perfect” and targeting a more refined and evolved RSBS audience.
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.
