Hindi
Tavernier to get lifetime achievement award at 42nd IFFI
PANAJI: A total of 167 films from about sixty countries will be screened at the 42nd International Film Festival of India commencing 23 November, when renowned French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier will receive the Lifetime Achievement award from Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni.
This award, which had been started around a decade earlier and later abandoned, has been revived and will include a cash award of Rs 1 million.
The festival will be inaugurated by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan at the Rabindra Bhavan in Madgaon. The festival will open with ‘The Consul of Bordeaux‘ by Francisco Manso and Joao Correa and will close on 3 December with ‘The Lady‘ by Luc Besson on the life of Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.
Bertrand Tavernier is best known for his films ‘Prix Louis Delluc‘ and the ‘Silver Bear‘ as well as for the Special Jury Prize award winner for his film ‘The Clockmaker‘ at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival. Tavernier has to his credit acclaimed films like ‘Life and Nothing But‘ which won the BEFTA for best film in a language other than English in 1990 and ‘The Princess of Montpensier‘ which competed for the Palme d‘Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
The Festival will pay homage to seven stalwarts of the film industry who were well known for their creative geniuses. The international luminaries who will be remembered at this year‘s festival include Sidney Lumet, Raul Ruiz, Claude Chabrol, Adolfas Meekas, Richard Leacock, Elizabeth Taylor and Tareque Masood. The Indian to whom homage is being paid include Mani Kaul, Shammi Kapoor, Jagjit Singh, Bhupen Hazarika, and Rabindra Nath Tagore who will be remembered with the screening of five films based on his written works.
The Indian Panorama will open with the Malayalam film ‘Urunami‘ and will showcase eclectic Indian movies like ‘Ranjana Ami Ar Asho Na‘, ‘Zindagi Milegi Na Doobara‘, ‘Noong Amadi Yeroom‘, and much more.
The total budget of the Festival is around Rs 100 million including the award money of Rs 10 million, Festival Director Shankar Mohan said at a press meet here. Others who spoke were Entertainment Society of Goa CEO Manoj Srivastava, and eminent filmmaker AK Bir.
Bringing together the gems of the cinematic world, which have found acclaim in noted film festivals abroad, this year‘s film festival will be showcasing ‘Festivals Kaleidoscope‘, a package which includes top award winners in film festivals like Cannes, Locarno, Montreal and Busan. There will be sections on European Discoveries, Spotlight in India, Documentaries, Sketches on screen, and Soccer in Cinema, and Russian Classics. The country focus is on the United States. There will also be some Masterclasses.
The ‘Retrospective‘ section which screens acclaimed movies of eminent film personalities, will screen unforgettable movies of two legendary directors. Luc Besson, one of the most revered and acclaimed names in the French film industry, will be present. Another luminary whose works will be showcased at the festival is the much acclaimed Australian film director Phillip Noyce.
The five-member International Jury is headed by famed filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan judging fourteen films. Seven outstanding films which could not make it to the competition are being shown in a section known as ‘A Cut Above‘.
With a view to bring along a technological revolution in this year‘s festival, the Festival will showcase 3D stereoscopic movies which are chosen not for their stereoscopic content, but also for excellence in handling the medium. This section will bring together 3D classics from across the world.
Srivastava also gave details about the Short Film Center and the Chhota Cinema section for new filmmakers.
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.
