Hindi
Indian director Sarthak Dasgupta wins Sundance-Mahindra filmmaking award
MUMBAI: Indian filmmakers are going places. Sarthak Dasgupta from India and three other directors have won the 2013 Sundance-Mahindra Global filmmaking award that supports the emerging independent talent from around the world.
Dasgupta, who has previously written and directed award-winning film The Great Indian Butterfly, won the award this time for The Music Teacher. The other winners include Jonas Carpignano from Italy-US for A Chjana, Brazilian director Aly Muritiba for The Man Who Killed My Beloved Dead and Vendela Vida and Eva Weber for Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, a UK-Germany-US co-production.
Each of the four winning filmmakers will receive a cash award of $10,000, attendance at the Sundance Film Festival and creative and strategic support.
This is the second year that one of the four award recipients is an Indian. Last year‘s winner was Shonali Bose for her project Margarita, With A Straw.
The awards were presented at a private ceremony at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah (US) by Rohit Khattar, Chairman, Mumbai Mantra, Michelle Satter, Founding Director, Feature Film Programme, Sundance Institute and Paul Federbush, International Director, Feature Film Programme, Sundance Institute.
“At a time when there is no dearth of issues around the world that are crying out to be heard, the Global Filmmaking award recognises independent filmmakers who give expression to those voices,” said the Mahindra Group chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra in a statement.
“The Mahindra Group is proud to assist the Sundance Institute in this endeavour, which, in line with the Group‘s ‘Rise‘ philosophy, aims to drive a positive change in communities across the world,” he added.
The nomination committee for the Indian Award winner included prominent names from Indian cinema like Sharmila Tagore, Anil Kapoor, Rajkumar Hirani, Ramesh Sippy, Shabana Azmi, Shyam Benegal, Anjum Rajabali, K Hariharan and Ira Bhaskar.
The Sundance Institute-Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award is part of a multifaceted collaboration that exemplifies a commitment to and support of world cinema by the Mahindra Group, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in India, and the non-profit Sundance Institute, one of the world‘s leading cultural organisations.
This is the third and the last of the three-year collaboration between the two organisations.
The Sundance-Mahindra Group‘s collaboration also includes the Mumbai Mantra Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab in India, which provides an annual opportunity for eight screenwriters from India to develop their works under the guidance of accomplished international screenwriters.
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.
