While We Watched [2022]

 In his nuanced, compelling, politically urgent and deeply solemn reportage essay While We Watched, Vinay Shukla freely traversed from the macro to the personal – a country engulfed with unfettered majoritarianism, frenzied nationalism and religious zealotry; the rotten state of mainstream TV media that feeds on hysteria and hatred, and spews it back through virulent disinformation, thus shaping and proliferating the right-wing narrative; the extraordinary struggle that a journalist must endure in order to remain independent and ask uncomfortable questions – while crafting an elegiac paean to Ravish Kumar. The former Senior Executive Editor with NDTV – he worked there for nearly 30 years and anchored a number of flagship programmes, prior to his resignation immediately upon the media house’s hostile takeover by the oligarchic Adani Group – was as celebrated for his courage, defiance, resilience, integrity and plain-speaking (with wry satiric undertones), including being bestowed with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, as he was incessantly vilified, abused and threatened for neither pandering to the government lines nor cheerleading for the right like his bile-spewing peers. Shukla crafted discomfiting juxtapositions by interlacing the increasingly dystopian external milieu – cow vigilantism and mob lynching by bigoted supremacists; character assassinations and threats of violence against people freely designated as “anti-nationals”; crackdown on social and political dissenters using official agencies, etc. – with melancholic interiority, achieved through intimate close-ups of Kumar, growing desolation at seeing his colleagues leave (farewell cakes served as a running motif), his moments with his family frequently broken by malicious calls, etc. This, along with the terrific Writing With Fire from previous year, powerfully depicted the crumbling fourth pillar of democracy, by fearlessly yet tenderly documenting rare exceptions that’re stirring and disquieting in equal measures.

Director: Vinay Shukla

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi/English

Country: India