Hindi
Three UTV films to screen at the Shanghai Intl Film Festival
MUMBAI: Three films from the UTV stable, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Dhobi Ghat and Bollywood: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, have been selected to be screened at the 15th Shanghai International Film Festival to be held in Shanghai from 16 to 24 June. The films will be presented in the Panorama Section of the festival.
Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu has been produced by UTV and Dharma Productions and directed by Shakun Batra, while Dhobi Ghat is produced by Aamir Khan Productions and directed by Kiran Rao and has UTV as its distributor. Bollywood is produced by UTV and Shekhar Kapur and directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Jeff Zimbalist.
Disney UTV executive director – syndication, International distribution and Disney Media Distribution, Studios Amrita Pandey said, “China is a booming market for movies and is growing at a scorching pace. There is an increasing interest for Indian content in many Asian markets like China, South Korea and Taiwan. We recently released Delhi Belly in mainstream cinemas in Hong Kong and we have seen an encouraging response.
“At UTV, we send our movies to film festivals in our focus markets and The Shanghai International Film Festival is a perfect platform to showcase our movies and to get an opportunity for 3 movies is a rare honour!”
UTV Motion Pictures‘ foray into newer markets like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Latin America, South Korea, Turkey, Romania, Russia, and Italy has led to the wider showcasing of films produced by the studio.
In the past, many of UTV‘s titles including Jodhaa Akbar, A Wednesday!, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Chillar Party and Welcome to Sajjanpur and more recently Delhi Belly and Paan Singh Tomar have travelled in the festival circuit.
Earlier, UTV‘s Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-starrer Jodhaa Akbar was screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2009.
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.
