Hindi
‘Tasher Desh’ based on Tagore play set for release on 23 August
NEW DELHI: The film Tasher Desh (The Land of Cards), a fantasy film in Bengali made on a play by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore directed by Q (Qaushiq Mukherjee), will be released in theatres on 23 August with English sub-titles.
The film which has already been screened in Rome, London, Amsterdam and Toronto Film Festivals, has been produced by the National Film Development Corporation, Overdose Joint, AKFPL (Anurag Kashyap Films Pvt Ltd), Entre Chien Et Loup, and Dream Digital Inc.
The film stars Rii (Rituparna Sen), Tillotama Shome, Joyraj Bhattacharjee, Soumyak Kanti De Biswas, Anubrata Das, Arijit Dutta, Imaad Shah, Tinu Verghis, and Maya Tideman.
Though the original play and music is by Tagore, the music in the film is by Neel Adhikari/Miti Adhikari/Q. The musicians featuring in the film are Asian dub foundation Susheela Raman Sam Mills Eric Truffaz Moog Conspiracy Anusheh Sahana Bajpai Jens chr. Bugge Wesseltoft Tanmoy Bose Jivraj Singh Diego Neel Adhikari Miti Adhikari Arijit Chakraborty Seth Blumberg Esme Folley Nirmalya de Biswas Mainak nag Choudhury.
The film is in the form of a story-teller wanting to tell a story. The story he tells mingles between his own story and that of a queen and her son banished to a palace where they lead a life of luxury and decadence. An oracle whispers the secret words to the prince and he leaves the palace with his friend, the merchant’s son. Their boat sinks and they arrive at the land of cards where the inhabitant cards are governed by a military regime. The prince and his friend get caught and bring about a change in the women cards with music and prophecies of love. The woman cards revolt. The king who banished them surrenders and the prince finds the meaning of life.
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.
