Hindi
Paan Sigh Tomar collects Rs 120 mn in 2 weeks, says UTV
MUMBAI: UTV has said that its release Paan Singh Tomar, the biopic of a soldier-athlete who turned a dacoit, has collected Rs 120 million at the domestic box office.
The film was made on a shoestring budget of Rs 45 million.
UTV Motion Pictures CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur said, “Great content, superb reviews, incredible word of mouth and a perfectly targeted distribution strategy has played a significant role in the film‘s success. In the second week of its run, we have gone wider with a release in the Gulf and in 20 additional Tier 2 and 3 cities in India.”
He added that the film’s success vindicated a long held belief that audiences today are open to new styles of storytelling and new genres of cinema, as long as they are engaging and entertaining. “At UTV, we have consistently kept the faith in new filmmakers and new genres and are thrilled today to see this cinema achieve the sort of commercial success nobody thought possible.”
Director Tigmanshu Dhulia added, “This story was with me for more than 10 years and now to see the same story materialise into a film opening to packed theaters fills me with immense pride. It is a fascinating tale and I am really grateful to each and every one who has made this movie a huge success and for the kind of efforts and research that went behind making this film. As a director, it is very encouraging to see that the audiences are ready to consume films that redefine the general norms of filmmaking.”
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.
