Director Vinay Shukla’s documentary While We Watched with host Ravish Kumar won an award at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A movie called Namaskar! The Hindi starrer Ravish Kumar won the Amplify Voices Award at the recently concluded film gala, a press release from the makers said.Other Amplify Voices Award winners included Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger for Best Canadian Feature and Martika Ramirez Escobar’s Leonore Will Never Die.
While We Were Watching is described as a turbulent news drama that intimately captures the working days of radio journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates the spiraling world of truth and disinformation. Through the lens of its hero – a man who clings to integrity even as everything falls apart – ‘While We Watched’ encourages the viewer to consider their own responsibility and guilt as the news and media come under greater scrutiny than ever before, Vinay’s upcoming film delivers the promise of a bold, timely and globally relevant documentary,” read the official description.
Vinay Shukla’s debut feature An Insignificant Man, which chronicles the rise of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), was also screened at the prestigious 2016 film festival. The filmmaker said that journalists are “the foremost storytellers of our time”. “I spent two years in Ravish’s newsroom and watched him build his daily broadcast. Ravish and his team would set some stories straight, some stories almost. As I watched him, I realized that for every story we see in the news, there is a cost to the journalist behind the story an emotional, financial, ethical, and mental cost.
“No story is easy, every story is personal. This film is about the personal cost journalists pay to do their job right. My film would be about any journalist who stood his ground and decided to report a story that was true to their beliefs. This film is my love letter to journalism,” Shukla said in a statement. While We Watched is a British production and is produced by LONO Studio and BRITDOC Films.
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