Vinay Shukla, an Indian filmmaker, is bringing his latest movie titled While We Watched to Sheffield Doc Fest in the UK for its debut. The movie, produced by the UK’s Lono Studio and BritDoc Films, is billed as a “turbulent newsroom drama” that chronicles the working days of broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates a world of truth and disinformation. The movie has won several awards, including the Amplify Voices award at TIFF, the Cinephile Award at the Busan International Film Festival, the International Competition Award at Helsinki’s DocPoint festival, and the Sabeen Mahmud Award for Courage in Cinema.
Ravish Kumar, a winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, one of Asia’s highest honors, was a journalist at Indian news platform NDTV. However, he resigned after billionaire Gautam Adani took over the company and set up his own YouTube channel, where he broadcasts and has already built a following of 6.22M subscribers. While We Watched, which debuted at TIFF last year, offers a dignified lens into the abyss as factual reporting is in freefall.
Vinay Shukla, who previously directed the controversial Indian documentary An Insignificant Man, produced the movie alongside Khushboo Ranka and Luke W. Moody. The executive producers include Maxyne Franklin, Jess Search, Beadie Finzi, and Vijay Vaidyanathan. The movie is set to release in the UK from July 14, and Shukla described it as his love letter to journalism, adding that it’s an urgent newsroom horror film, with a story of hope hidden deep inside layers of personal loneliness.