Hindi
Sarika is jury member in Mumbai film fest
MUMBAI: The Mumbai Film Festival has selected Sarika as its fifth jury member for the International competition section.
The actress joins the league of Academy Award nominee director Hugh Hudson (jury president, international competition), Roger Spottiswoode (director of Tomorrow Never Dies and the Arnold Schwarzenegger starrer The 6th Day), acclaimed Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski and Korean director Na-Hong Jin who received numerous awards and acclaim for his films The Chaser and The Yellow Sea.
Said Mumbai Film Festival director Srinivasan Narayanan, "Sarika is both an international as well as an Indian actor and understands the medium of cinema in its entirety. We are happy that she graciously accepted to be a part of the jury."
Having started her career as a child actress, Sarika has acted in approximately 100 films. In 2006, the actress won National Award in ‘Best Actress’ category for her role in Parzania and also a National Award for ‘Best Costume Design’ for Hey Ram.
Said an elated Sarika, "I am delighted to be part of the 13th Mumbai film festival jury. I am looking forward to watching quality cinema of different kinds and meeting my counterparts from both India and abroad. I think the Mumbai Film Festival gives cinema lovers a great opportunity to experience world cinema. With buzz surrounding this year’s festival and the selection of films, I am certain that a new milestone will be set."
The 13th Mumbai Film Festival is scheduled to be held from 13 to 20 October.
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.
