Hindi
Pan Nalin’s Kumbh Mela film finds buyers in Europe
Eminent Indian-origin filmmaker Pan Nalin’s documentary Faith Connections has been sold to France and Switzerland ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
SDD (Sophie Dulac Distribution) has acquired French rights to the India-French co-production, filmed at India’s Kumbh Mela, while the Swiss rights went to Filmcoopi. Advanced negotiations are also underway for sales to Canada, the US, Germany and India.
The film is being sold by Raphael Berdugo’s Cite Films, which is also co-produced with Nalin and Gaurav Dhingra’s Jungle Book Entertainment. Berdugo, Dhingra, Nalin and Virginie Lacombe are credited as producers.
Faith Connections follows the stories of holy men, policemen, pilgrims and a runaway child at India’s biggest religious festival, which is held once every 12 years and attracts around 100 million Hindu pilgrims.
Nalin has previously directed feature documentary Ayurveda: Art of Being and narrative features Samsara and The Valley of Flowers.
“We decided to co-produce and take on the sales of this film because we trust the talent of director Pan Nalin to tell us deeply moving human stories which can appeal to the world,” said Berdugo.
“My experience of international sales when I was in charge of Roissy Films was that the common language of the world is emotion and people are eager to be moved while discovering other cultures.”
“Ayurveda: Art of Being and Samsara were huge successes in Switzerland – both were based on the vast interest of our audience in spirituality and a quest of wellbeing of humanity. Pan Nalin’s new film follows these themes and we are sure that it will be successful too,” said Filmcoopi’s Felix Hachler.
“A garland of magnificent images captured by Pan Nalin; truly exceptional characters with simple but astonishing stories; and an incredible happening which only occurs once in twelve years encouraged us to bring this extraordinary documentary to the French public,” said Dulac.
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.
