executive producer
Beadie Finzi
executive producer
Maxyne Franklin
producer
Luke W. Moody
producer
Vinay Shukla
executive producer
Vijay Vaidyanathan
Development support
Production support
Impact campaign support
Film Details
Format: Feature length film
Doc Society Involvement
Docsoc helped with Development
Docsoc helped with Production
Docsoc helped with an Impact Campaign
While We Watched explores the changes in contemporary Indian mainstream media over the previous decade, through profiling Ravish Kumar, senior executive editor at NDTV, at work in the studio and with his subjects.Indian media ownership,bias and the post-truth, divisive, populist content have led to many mainstream television news channels being labelled Godi media (equivalent to the phrase lapdog media, and incidentally coined by Ravish Kumar).
The documentary follows Kumar as he tries to stick to factual news, criticizing the Indian government and its ecosystem whenever instances of incompetent governance and majoritarian policies emerge. It chronicles the discussions between Kumar and the NDTV team on the events that they need to cover, the preparatory work of fact-checking and witness interviews before Kumar can go live on the primetime show he anchors. It contrasts the coverage by Kumar with that of competing television channels whose anchors are shown hyperbolically conflating criticism of the government's policies with treason and going on diatribes against alleged internal and external enemies of India. It also covers the threats of violence against the NDTV news team, and the financial troubles plaguing media houses that are seen as critics of the BJP, the ruling party in India. Kumar is filmed interacting with his wife and young daughter - particularly having to deal with his daughter's fears for his life - and appearing at public events, alternately being heckled and lauded by audiences. It ends on the highnote of Ravish Kumar winning the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2019.
While We Watched frequently features scenes of NDTV staff cutting cakes to mark the departure of yet another colleague. Raids by tax authorities, dwindling government advertising revenue, banks refusing to provide loans and threats of violence and even arrest have led to many journalists leaving. Shukla observed that these "cake cuttings" were what convinced him to tell the story and in fact became a leitmotif of the documentary.
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Awards & Festivals
Awards
Reviews
“While We Watched” is an urgent interrogation of the state of journalism today. And yet, while important, it’s unclear what this has to say that hasn’t already been said.
Kumar’s humility and eloquence ensure that the film never slips into hagiography — instead, it lingers as a lament and a battle cry.
Speaking truth to power has gone dangerously out of style. Such is the dark message of While We Watched, the kinetic and bleakly effective new documentary about media and democracy from Vinay Shukla.
At all events, it’s a valuable view on how easy it is for the news media to become sycophantic mouthpieces for the right.
A gripping, moving, sometimes frustrating portrait of a man consumed by a need to speak up, even as he wonders if anybody’s watching.
Like a sister film to Vera Krichevskaya’s F@ck This Job (about media control in Putin’s Russia), this is a gripping account of TV news under fire in Modi’s India.
This is tense, essential film-making that argues for the importance of serious, balanced journalism in today’s world of factional infotainment, while also showing the cost to those who stand against the tide.
Increasingly challenged and harassed, Kumar and his colleagues continue to fight the good fight. It’s harrowing to watch.
While We Watched, Vinay Shukla's profile of Ravish Kumar (and a country in crisis) works as a dystopian thriller, a character study about loneliness, and also a newsroom drama. But more than anything else, it's the best war movie of the year.
The film’s account is believable and worth seeing, but quite impressionistic. Despite its regard for journalistic rigour, Vinay Shukla’s movie is a bit short on facts and figures to provide context.
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