Hindi
YIFF honours 50 years of Nishant with Naseeruddin Shah
MUMBAI: Half a century on, the revolution still reels. The Yellowstone International Film Festival (YIFF) 2025 will open with a special tribute to Shyam Benegal’s path-breaking classic Nishant, marking 50 years of one of Indian cinema’s most defining social dramas.
The commemorative screening, set for 13 November 2025 at St. Andrew’s Auditorium, Bandra, will be graced by veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, who made one of his earliest and most memorable appearances in the film.
Released in 1975, Nishant brought together a powerhouse cast including Smita Patil, Girish Karnad, Amrish Puri, and Naseeruddin Shah, earning the National Film Award for best feature film in Hindi and international acclaim at Cannes. Renowned for its unflinching social realism and moral complexity, the film remains a cornerstone of Benegal’s cinema.
“Fifty years since its release, Nishant still mirrors power, morality, and human resilience,” said YIFF festival director Anshika Singh. “To honour both Nishant’s golden jubilee and Naseeruddin Shah’s 50 years in cinema, we’re thrilled to screen the newly restored 2K version at our opening ceremony. Having Shah Sahab with us makes this moment truly special.”
The tribute marks the official opening of YIFF 2025, a week-long celebration of Indian and global cinema from 13 to 20 November, featuring over 120 films across PVR Lido, Veda Black Box, and Veda Kunba Theatre.
This year’s line-up includes acclaimed titles such as Aisha Can’t Fly Away, Caravan, Holy Rosita, Aurora, Beautiful Evening, Beautiful Day, and The Second Coming, alongside Indian standouts like Kaisi Ye Paheli and Dream Factory.
The festival will also feature masterclasses with filmmakers Hansal Mehta, Shoojit Sircar, and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, along with industry panels on diversity, empathy, and the future of storytelling.
As the curtains rise on this cinematic celebration, YIFF 2025 promises to be a heartfelt homage to storytelling that continues to question, move, and inspire, just as Nishant did half a century ago.
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.
