Hindi
PVR Director’s Rare to release Chaurahen on 16 March
MUMBAI: PVR Director‘s Rare, the recently launched alternative programming initiative of PVR Cinemas, will release Rajshree Ojha’s Chaurahen (Crossroads) on 16 March.
Chaurahen is an evocative and poignant film consisting of three separate stories set in three different cities in contemporary India. The vignettes present snippets of everyday life. There is a troubled adulterous affair in Kolkata, a family dealing loss of a son in Kochi and a young man in Mumbai dealing with memories of his ancestral home.
The crossroads at which their lives are at render heartfelt situations between characters that create empathy. The film is presented in English language with Rajshree Ojha‘s inimitable, stark visual story telling style.
Said PVR Ltd. joint managing director Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, “I feel extremely proud that our second movie under the PVR Director‘s Rare Banner is releasing on March 16th this year and it will be released exclusively at select PVR Cinemas. Chaurahen is a well-woven film based on three different stories. It also boasts of an ensemble cast consisting of very talented actors.”
The film has won rave reviews during its festival rounds at the South Asian International Film Festival – New York, Mumbai International Film Festival (MAMI), Mumbai Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival -New Delhi, Cairo International Film Festival – Egypt, Marbella Film Festival – Spain, Imagine India, Madrid Film Festival, Everglades Film Festival, Durban – South Africa, Cape Town Bollywood Film Festival, The Swansea Bay Film Festival, England, Bogotá Film Festival in Columbia and the Trichur Film Festival.
The film stars Soha Ali Khan, Ankur Khanna, Victor Banerjee, Kiera Chaplin, Roopa Ganguly, Zeenat Aman, Shayan Munshi, Karthik Kumar, Suchitra Pillai, Arundathi Nag, Nedumudi Venu and Siddharth Makkad among others.
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.
