Hindi
UTV signs Rajkumar Gupta and Emraan Hashmi for Ghanchakkar
MUMBAI: Continuing its association with director Rajkumar Gupta, UTV Motion Pictures has signed the director to helm their forthcoming film Ghanchakkar while it has also signed Emraan Hashmi to play a stellar role in the film.
UTV Motion Pictures CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur said, “After two back-to-back hits Aamir and No One Killed Jessica, we are thrilled to announce our next film Ghanchakkar with Rajkumar Gupta. What makes this even more exciting is that we will be working with Emraan Hashmi for the first time in the film.”
Hashmi plays the title character in Ghanchakkar, that of a suave safe-cracker who likes the finer things in life. He decides to pull off one last heist which leads to unexpected confusion and chaos. The question is does he get out of it without losing it and who is conning whom?
This is Hashmi‘s first film with UTV Motion Pictures. Hashmi said, “It‘s great to be associated with UTV and Rajkumar Gupta. Ghanchakkar is one of the best scripts I‘ve heard in recent times. Commercial, edgy and very entertaining, I am sure this one‘s going to be a landmark film in my career.”
Of his third film with UTV, director Gupta said, “Ghanchakkar is a quasi-realistic urban comedy/thriller highlighting the absurdity of certain real human situations. Very excited to have Emraan on board and glad to be taking forward my association with Ronnie and his amazing team at UTV after Aamir and No One Killed Jessica. We made the audience cry in Aamir and No One Killed Jessica and with Ghanchakkar we‘re going to make them laugh.”
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.
