Hindi
Rajshri forays into detective movie space
MUMBAI: It is no longer a banner that once made family dramas. Rajshri Production, renowned for movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Hum Saath Saath Hain is all set to take a big leap through its upcoming movie Samrat & Co. Produced by debutante Kavita Barjatya, the movie is the first detective film under the Rajshri banner. The movie has been helmed by Kaushik Ghatak and hits the screens on 25 April.
The film’s unique and intriguing trailer was launched with great fanfare at a suburban multiplex in Mumbai with not only the entire cast and crew but the Barjatya scions as well!
“This subject is unconventional as compared to the films we have made at Rajshri earlier, so that whole mounting and canvas had to be different. The grey characters were the requirement of the story. I am happy that when we narrated the story to my father, he understood and supported me in venturing into this. Every character in the movie is intriguing and has some hidden agenda,” says Kavita Barjatya.
The movie targets the youth and is the first of its kind detective franchisee, wherein the very nuances of crime solving, human nature and the world of standalone private investigators will be presented on the big screen on a pure entertainment platform.
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The poster and trailer of Samrat & Co were launched amidst the presence of Kamal Barjatya, Sooraj Barjatya, producer Kavita Barjatya, director Kaushik Ghatak, main leads Rajeev Khandelwal (who plays Samrat), Madalsa Sharma, Rajniesh Duggal, Smita Jaykar,Bhoumik Sampat, Naveen Prabhakar, Gufi Paintal, Shreya Narayan amongst 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.
