Hindi
Sujoy Ghosh to make Aranyer Din Ratri in Hindi
MUMBAI: Director Sujoy Ghosh has firmed up plans to make a Hindi film on Sunil Gangopadhyay‘s Bengali novel Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest).
The novel was first adapted on a film by the same name by Satayajit Ray in 1970.
Aranyer Din Ratri revolves around four friends who take off to a forested tribal land in Bihar to escape the daily, monotonous grind and return to the city after three days a little wiser having rediscovered life and finding some startling answers to what they were seeking.
The film is expected to roll next year with Ghosh currently working on the script. Avers Ghosh, “Knowing very well that Satyajit Ray had made a masterpiece, I will have to see how close I can go of him in terms of storytelling. My only worry is I shouldn‘t go wrong and if I do so, I will have to face the wrath of Bengalis allover.”
Meanwhile, the post-production work of his Kahaani is going on in full speed with it slated to release on 9 March. Kahaani, starring Vidya Balan, is the tale of Vidya, who arrives from London in search of her missing husband Arnab Bagchi. Seven months pregnant and alone in a festive city, with nothing to rely upon except fragments from her memories about him, Vidya is determined to unravel the truth about her missing husband.
Meanwhile in the days when films are being adapted from novels, a novel is to be written inspired by Kahaani. Advaita Kala, who has penned the script of the film, plans to write a novel on the same story line, but with a twist. The book might be launched towards the end of 2012.
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.
