OME LATEST NEWS WEB STORIES MORE Kannada CinemaMalayalam CinemaTamil CinemaTelugu CinemaBollywoodOTTTelevisionHollywoodRegional CinemaBIGG BOSSMovie ReviewGossip Home » Entertainment » While We Watched Movie Review:... While We Watched movie review: Vinay Shukla's documentary on Ravish Kumar documents Indian journalism's lone voice Aditya Shrikrishna Published On: 13 Sept 2022 10:00 AM Ravish Kumar in While We Watched Vinay Shukla's documentary paints a picture of struggle and disillusionment that is at the centre of journalism in India. Starcast : Ravish Kumar, Deepak Chaubey, Sushil Bahuguna Director: Vinay Shukla Rating: 3 star Highlights While We Watched documents the daily battle of making peace with doing the right thing while not getting heard or rewarded. While several journalists and activists have been arrested, Ravish Kumar becomes an important if privileged figure just by virtue of being on a television at prime time. Kumar becomes the lone voice with a direct line to a large part of India. Vinay Shukla's documentary While We Watched focuses on the life and work of TV journalist Ravish Kumar of NDTV India, fighting not just the government by asking the right questions under a din of hate while wading through misinformation, but also trying to keep a channel afloat with ratings, censorship and budgetary cuts vying for attention. At the offices of NDTV India, a cake is cut when someone has quit or retiring or leaving the media for greener, more stress-free pastures. Kumar gets out of his modest office to have a slice, smiling only when he must and a world-weary look on his face as his medium is chiselled away by the system. It gets emotional at times like when his producer leaves after almost a decade (he tips his hat to her in that evening's bulletin) or when he wishes he could have run someone's story as a going away present.
The first half hour of While We Watched continues in a blitzkrieg of quick cuts and unannounced change in locations and narrative. The stylistic choice helps with recreating a newsroom (Shukla is following Kumar throughout) and the attritional nature of news in the last few years. An assassination attempt on Umar Khalid is followed by a video of two Hindu nationalists proudly taking responsibility. "How did someone walk into the centre of the nation's capital with a gun?", asks Kumar in disbelief. Next minute, he's listening to a junior colleague talk about the relationship between increasing unemployment and this systemic fostering of hate and youth mobilisation to sustain it.
The first half hour of While We Watched continues in a blitzkrieg of quick cuts and unannounced change in locations and narrative. The stylistic choice helps with recreating a newsroom (Shukla is following Kumar throughout) and the attritional nature of news in the last few years. An assassination attempt on Umar Khalid is followed by a video of two Hindu nationalists proudly taking responsibility. "How did someone walk into the centre of the nation's capital with a gun?", asks Kumar in disbelief. Next minute, he's listening to a junior colleague talk about the relationship between increasing unemployment and this systemic fostering of hate and youth mobilisation to sustain it.