Opening Doorz

By Martin D’Souza | Opening Doorz Editorial | April 21, 2017

Rating: 1 / 5

The essence: Noor is a crash-course on television journalism.

Noor Roy Chaudhary (Sonakshi Sinha) works for a television channel headed by Shekhar Das (Manish Chaudhary), once a fiery journalist with a nose for news, now, settled for ‘comfortable news’ with no intention to ruffle feathers and which, in some manner advances his family business and that of his business contacts and associates. He has deliberately chosen this path because he is married into a rich family and the Television Network came as a dowry. Many of Noor’s ‘good’ stories are kept on the back-burner, whilst she is sent to interview Sunny Leone on her birthday (Noor’s birthday) on a rainy day.

Well, this is Noor’s life. Most of it is informed to us by Noor herself, as she wakes up from bed one morning. Her likes, dislikes, friends, etc. etc. is all narrated to the viewer as the scenes play on screen. This goes on for over 40 minutes, until Noor stumbles on a kidney scam.

Sensing a good story, and without any concern for the victims, she records her story and gives it to her boss. But before she can even wake up, another channel has already aired the clip claiming it their own!

Noor is threatened (I wonder how the people behind the scam came to know it was her story); the victims harassed and ultimately the doctor involved in the scam walks free. But Noor is scarred. Scarred because she acted in a naïve manner and trusted too easily and someone lost his life because of her carelessness.

After a few months she decides to set things right with a feature on social media which gets tagged #IamNoor.

India, now wants to know!

The case is reopened, the doctor arrested. In the bargain, we get a few insights in ethics on journalism, on how to research a story and when to ‘air’ and when not to.

CREDITS
Producer: Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Vikram Malhotra
Director: Sunhil Sippy
Star Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Kanan Gill, Manish Chaudhary