Hindi
Maiden Indian film fest in Poland honours Koirala, Mittra
NEW DELHI: Wave Cinemas’ CEO Rahul Mitra and actress Manisha Koirala were honoured with special awards at the first-ever Indian Film Festival in Poland (Warsaw).
They also took part in the grand red carpet event at the iconic ‘Kinoteka’ theatre in the heart of Warsaw. A special audience of hundreds of Polish and Indian film buffs and dignitaries attended the event, along with key representatives of the Indian film industry led by Mittra, an award-winning filmmaker.
His current production Saheb Biwi aur Gangster 3 with Sanjay Dutt and Koirala is being shot in Bikaner.
The event co-curated by Captain Rahul Bali and RC Dalal screened some blockbuster Bollywood movies like Sarkar 3 apart from three regional language films from the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Assam. The package of seven films will thus give Polish and diaspora audiences a glimpse of the huge talent in India’s regional film industry as well.
Koirala, who had acted in ‘1942- A love story’ among others was a special guest at the festival while Mittra was awarded for his outstanding contribution to Indian Cinema. In a short span of time, he has produced blockbusters like Saheb Biwi aur Gangster series, Bullett Raja, Revolver Rani, Sarkar 3, among other, and is known for backing good content.
Ambassador Ajay Bisaria lauded the growing engagement between the film industries of India and Poland and invited the Polish audience to witness the strength of the Indian film industry with its boundless creativity.
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.
