Hindi
YRF partners with Posham Pa Pictures for theatrical releases
MUMBAI: It’s the coming together of a successful legacy studio and a new age creative production banner. Yash Raj Films (YRF) today announced that it is partnering with series producer Posham Pa Pictures to jointly develop and produce theatrical films beginning 2025.
YRF is known for several iconic films like Chandni, Kaala Patthar, Lamhe, Darr, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Chak De! India, Dhoom and others. Posham Pa Pictures has been behind streaming series such as Netflix’s Kaala Paani, Mamla Legal Hai and Jaadugar and Disney+ Hotstar’s Home Shanti.
The partnership marks Posham Pa’s foray into theatrical films releases. YRF will provide it with the studio infrastructure and its strong distribution capabilities, which is the vision of Aditya Chopra – the son of YRF founder, the late Yash Chopra. The transformation of YRF from being just a producer to a studio is being led by the firm’s CEO Akshaye Widhani.
Said Widhani: “It is truly the coming together of similar creative minds that are constantly striving for excellence by pushing the content envelope. Posham Pa Pictures have shown that they know the pulse of the audience by giving us unique and incredibly fresh stories that have won them unanimous acclaim. Our partnership will now aim to create ground-breaking theatrical experiences for today’s audiences who are seeking out new and novel storytelling to engage, endorse & celebrate.”
Posham Pa was founded by partners Sameer Saxena, Amit Golani, Biswapati Sarkar and Saurabh Khanna.
“The coming together of YRF and Posham Pa Pictures throws open a world of exciting, unchartered creative possibilities,” said Saxena. “We are thrilled at the opportunity to jointly create theatrical experiences like never before with YRF and entertain the audience with unique, fresh stories.”
(Picture courtesy: Biswapati Sarkar’s X account)
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.
