Hindi
The Lunch Box set to release this week after winning international acclaim
The Lunch Box by Ritesh Batra, which has already won high acclaim in the Festival circuit overseas including Cannes where it was premiered, is finally being released in India on 20 September.
In Hindi and English, the film stars Irrfan Khan with newcomer Nimrat Kaur, apart from Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Denzil Smith, Bharati Achrekar, Nakul Vaid, Baby Yashvi Puneet Nagar and Lillete Dubey.
Filmed by Michael Simmonds and edited by John Lyons with music by Max Richter, the film is the first full-length feature by Batra.
Briefly, it is the story of a young married woman Ila who attempts to give a new life to her marriage by trying out new recipes which she sends out to her husband in the lunch box through the network of 5000 ‘Dabbawallahs’ who operate in Mumbai. But she soon realises that her box is reaching the wrong address and this leads to a chain of letters through the lunch box between Ila and Saajan – an older person on the verge of retirement who really relishes the food – through which they share their anxieties and fears and in a manner of speaking, fall in love. But they never get to meet each other.
Harvard University had once analyzed the delivery system of the ‘Dabbawallahs’, and concluded that just one in a million lunchboxes is ever delivered to the wrong address. Batra says this is the story of that one lunchbox.
Addressing a press meet, Batra said he had initially been researching on a documentary on the Dabbawallahs and had many of them and heard several stories. It was then that he felt he wanted to put a story behind the research.
Karan Johar who along with Siddharth Roy Kapoor of UTV is one of the presenters of the film said he had always picked films that had a soul in them and would touch people’s hearts and this was his reason for associating with this venture.
He said the end had deliberately been left vague and to the viewer’s imagination.
Others present at the press meet were producer Guneet Monga, Kapoor, and actors Irrfan Khan, Nimrit Kaur, and Bharati Achrekar.
Shot on location in Mumbai, the film made its world premiere at the Semaine De La Critique (Critics Week) at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where the film received rave reviews.
Batra’s short films have been shown at many international film festivals and fine arts venues. His recent Arab language short Café Regular, Cairo, screened at over 40 international film festivals and won 12 awards including the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI) at Oberhausen, and Special Jury Mentions at Tribeca and Chicago. CAFÉ REGULAR, CAIRO was acquired by Franco-German broadcaster, Arte.
He is currently working on his next film Photograph and a collection of short stories.
Other producers are Anurag Kashyap and Arun Rangachari, while the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is a co-producer.
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.
