Why ‘Spotlight’ is so inspiring

The film stands as a testament to the power of journalism, reflecting how encouragement, teamwork and proper resources help journalists unearth structural issues and make a change.

The year was 2016. I was an Oscars fanatic—absolutist—back then, blissfully unaware that an award, no matter how revered, is mostly performance and, frankly, irrelevant. The lineup for ‘Best Picture’ was quite elaborate—‘Mad Max’, ‘The Revenant’, ‘The Martian’, all films whose drama and loudness I’d enjoyed. But what won was a quiet and, at the time, an utterly boring film (in my defense, I was 16)—‘Spotlight’.