Hindi
PVR to release five films from the slate of IFFA
MUMBAI: PVR Cinemas has signed an MOU with International Film Festival Ahmedabad (IFFA) to release five films from among those that will be showcased at the festival. The selected ones will get a limited release under PVR‘s new label: Director‘s Cut and Director‘s Rare.
Said IFFA founder and festival director Shiladitya Bora, “Every filmmaker wants to show his/her film in theaters to the public but normally independent films are turned down by distributors. We understand this very well and we want IFFA to bridge that gap by pioneering such an initiative.”
Initially, films in PVR Director‘s Cut will be screened in Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, after which the selected five films will travel to other PVR Cinemas across major metropolitan cities under a new brand of PVR Director‘s Rare.
PVR Ltd VP of films & marketing Shalu Sabharwal and PVR Cinemas programming head Prakhar Joshi will be instrumental in selecting the films.
Said PVR Limited COO Gautam Dutta, “We brought a new experience for the audiences when we launched our first multiplex and today we want to take it to a step forward by being the first ones to release a series of special non-mainstream niche films that are director‘s signature works under our new label of Director‘s Cut & Director‘s Rare which otherwise would never get a release.”
Popular fusion band Indian Ocean will perform on the opening day of the 3rd edition of the IFFA, while the closing day will see the Asian premiere of Anurag Kashyap‘s That Girl in Yellow Boots.
The festival begins on 24 and closes on 28 of August.
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.
