Hindi
Mumbai film festival announces lineup
MUMBAI: The 13th Mumbai Film Festival, a Reliance entertainment initiative, has announced the lineup of about 200 films that would be screened under various sections films.
Scheduled to be held from 13 to 20 October, the 13th Mumbai Film Festival aims to showcase the truly global cinema. While Cinemax Versova would be the main hub of the festival, screenings would be held at Metro Big Cinemas and Cinemax Sion.
While the Brad Pitt starrer Moneyball will be the opening film of the festival, the Morgan Freeman starrer Dolphin Tale will close the festival. Among the films that will have their India premieres would be Melancholia directed by Lars Von Tier, The Whistle Blower, George Clooney‘s The Ides of March and Wim Wenders-directed Pina.
Announcing the lineup of films, Benegal said: “A feast of films awaits you at the 13th Mumbai Film Festival. We are extremely proud of the fact that Mumbai Film Festival is fast getting recognised to be the best international film festival in this country.”
Other films will compete for $200,000 under the three competition sections – ‘International Competition for the first feature films of directors‘; ‘Dimensions Mumbai‘; and ‘Harmony Celebrate Age‘.
Averred Mumbai film festival director Srinivasan Naryanan, “This year the selection committee had its task cut out for them. They had to choose from over 800 films to finally zero down on such a closely competitive lineup.”
The festival will pay tribute to Shammi Kapoor, M.F.Hussain and Mani Kaul with special screenings of their works. Additionally, a film retrospective of Jury President, Hugh Hudson‘s works including Revolution Revisited and I Dreamed of Africa would be screened.
Noted poet, lyricist, script writer and director, Gulzar will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
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.
