Hindi
London Paris New York to premiere in Karachi
MUMBAI: Ali Zafar, who shot to fame in the 2010 film Tere Bin Laden, is excited because his upcoming film London Paris New York is going to be premiered in Karachi on 8 March.
Two years ago, Zafar’s debut film Tere Bin Laden (2010) that the Pakistani singer-actor was co-distributing in Pakistan was banned three days before its release in the country for fear that Islamist extremists could use it as a pretext for terror attacks.
The ban followed even after the producers were willing to drop the word Laden from the title and release it as Tere Bin in the country. But despite all efforts, the film couldn’t be officially released there.
Zafar is confident that it won’t happen this time around. “There’s a huge buzz, people are looking forward to it. In fact, we’ve planned a big, red carpet premiere in Karachi on 8 March if we can get the requisite permission.”
Ali has been promoting the film extensively on Pakistan’s biggest TV network, Geo TV, which will be releasing the film in the country.
London Paris New York is a coming of age love story mirroring 3 states of love and brings back wit into Bollywood‘s romantic comedies.
The film is the story about Lalitha, a middle class south Indian girl from Chembur (an eastern suburb in Mumbai) who is on her way to New York to study politics with full scholarship, and Nikhil, a Punjabi, rich kid from Bandra (a posh western suburb of Mumbai )who is going to study Film Making in London on 100 per cent dad‘s money. They decide to hangout together one evening in London and find that they are completely drawn to each other even as their future lies on separate continents. The film follows their personal journey and their love story.
London Paris New York releases across India on 2 March.
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.
