While We Watched (2023)

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While We Watched is a 2022 Indian documentary film by Vinay Shukla, profiling the NDTV news editor Ravish Kumar's resolute journalistic independence in the backdrop of general media bias in India. The film premiered worldwide at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, winning the Amplify Voices award. At its Asian premiere in the 27th Busan International Film Festival, it won the Cinephile award and the International Competition at DocPoint Helsinki.

Background and production

Vinay Shukla says he made the film in an attempt to understand the feelings of journalists and anchors like Ravish Kumar as they try to present news and speak truth to power:

"I have stopped watching news and when I talk to my friends in India and other parts of the world, they say the same. I did this to protect my mental health. I asked myself - what do people behind media and news enterprises feel? Do they feel the same loneliness I feel consuming the news? Ravish Kumar is very articulate. And his programmes go against the current news culture in India."

Ravish Kumar agreed to being filmed provided it did not interfere with his work. Vinay Shukla with a three-person crew shot the raw footage for the documentary from 2018 to 2020. Since the documentary was completely unscripted, the narrative was primarily crafted during editing.

The crew shot for eight to nine hours every day starting from noon, accompanying Ravish Kumar from his home to the studio and stopping only when he finally returned at night. Shukla decided early on not to focus on the other prominent journalists in NDTV as his main inspiration was a sense he got that Kumar was at a crossroads in his career, tired of being a hero.

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