Hindi
UTV’s Kai Po Che to premiere at Berlin Film Fest
MUMBAI: UTV Motion Pictures‘ upcoming film Kai Po Che is scheduled to have its world premiere at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival scheduled to go under way next month.
The film, based on Chetan Bhagat‘s novel The 3 Mistakes of My Life, will be screened at the film festival on 13 February.
The film, which stars newcomers Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar Yadav and Amit Sadh in lead roles, portrays the journey of three friends as they discover cricket, religion and business in their respective fields.
Said Disney UTV Managing Director – Studios, Siddharth Roy Kapur, “We are incredibly proud that Kai Po Che has been selected for a world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. What is even more creditable is that it is the only Indian film in the official panorama selection announced by the festival this year.
For a film dependent entirely on its strong story line rather than its lineup of stars, this is a huge achievement and for that I would like to commend Abhishek Kapoor and his entire cast and crew for bringing all their talent and passion to bear, to make Kai Po Che a film for the ages.”
Set against the backdrop of religious politics, the story of Kai Po Che underlines the three mistakes made by Govind. The film as well as the book is set in Gujarat and hence the title Kai Po Che.
Thirty-one fictional features from 23 countries will provide insights into contemporary world cinema production at the 10-day-long Berlin ale festival.
The film will hit screens in India on 22 February.
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.
