Hindi
‘Miss Lovely’ adjudged best film at MAMI
Mumbai: In the newly introduced competition section for Indian feature films called ‘India Gold‘ at the MAMI film festival, director Ashim Ahluwalia‘s Miss Lovely was adjudged as the best film.
The film also won the Reliance Media Works‘ CreaTech (Creativity & Technology) award. The 14th Mumbai Film Festival organized by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) concluded with an awards ceremony.
Miss Lovely, a Hindi feature film set in the lower depths of Bombay‘s C grade film industry follows the devastating story of two brothers who produced sleazy horror films in the mid-1980s.
Hansal Mehta‘s real life drama Shahid won the runner-up award for best film. The special jury award was given to Manjeet Singh for his film Mumbai Cha Raja‘.
The Festival also honoured veteran actress Waheeda Rehman with the Lifetime Achievement Award for an Indian personality. She was presented the award by noted filmmaker and MAMI chairman Shyam Benegal. “I am thrilled to receive this award from MAMI. I dedicate it to the directors, producers, co-actors, technicians who have been a part of this journey with me,” the actress remarked after accepting the honour,” the actress averred.
Meanwhile, in the International Competition category for the first feature films of directors, AquY Alla (Here And There) was recognised as the best film. Dwight Henry got the best actor award for Beasts of the Southern Wild while the best actress award was given to Julia Garner for Electrick Children.
The jury award of technical excellence was awarded to Pankaj Kumar for Ship Of Theseus while Musa Sayeed was given the special jury award for the film ‘Valley Of Saints. In the Celebrate Age category, Night Boats was adjudged the best film while ‘The Delay‘ was the runner-up. ‘Ping Pong received a special mention trophy by jury.
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.
