Hindi
Tirlok Malik’s Khushiyaan at Teaneck International Film Festival
NEW DELHI: Emmy-Nominated America-based filmmaker Tirlok Malik‘s Punjabi film Khushiyaan is to be screened at the Teaneck International Film Festival in Teaneck, New Jersey.
The screening will be on 11 November.
Khushiyaan portrays the complex emotions of leaving parents in India and getting caught up in a busy American life. Shot in both India and New York, it combines family drama, comedy, and music into a thought-provoking film which is the journey of every NRI family. “It is the journey of family and as you‘re watching it, you may be surprised to find yourself there,” says Malik who has been a pioneer of Indian American cinema with films like ‘Lonely in America‘ and ‘Love, Lust and Marriage‘.
The film is distributed worldwide by Eros Entertainment.
Malik directed Khushiyaan, featuring Jasbir Jassi – famed singer of Dil Ley Gayee Kudi Gujarat Dee – making his debut as a lead actor, thespians Kulbushan Kharbanda and Rama Vij, Tisca Chopra, Deep Dhillon, Shrey Bawa, Vivek Shauq, and Gurpreet Guggi.
Khushiyaan is produced by Darshan Garg, D.P. Goyal, and Pardeep Bansal. The music is composed by Jaidev Kumar and there is also a Shabd sung by the late Ghazal King Jagjit Singh.
The film‘s writer Rajan Gangahar won the “best story” award at the Punjabi International Film Academy Award (PIFAA) held in Toronto.
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.
