“This probably isn’t the best place,” Lyndsey Addario says to her colleague Andriy Dubchak at the start of “Love + War,” referring to the limited amount of cover they find in a neighborhood of Kyiv as bombs can be heard in the background, but in February 2022 just after Russia invaded Ukraine, it seems as it could describe just about anywhere Addario could point her camera, though she is gently mocked by an old woman in the street who insists that this is simply the way life has been for some time. In fact, danger zones have been where Addario has been most at home as she’s made a life of selflessly running towards international conflicts rather than away from them as a photojournalist, yielding some of the impactful coverage of Afghanistan post-9/11 and the Arab Spring that have shed light on the violence and the human toll that have turned the tide in public consciousness. She has long been one of the best at what she does when as no less than the legendary war correspondent Dexter Filkins says, “Proof of that is in her pictures and the fact she’s still alive.”
It would be enough for a compelling film for Addario to simply open up about all the extraordinary things she’s witnessed since first going out to Kashmir in 2000 to take photos for the Associated Press, but taking a cue from their subject who always trains her lens where others wouldn’t think to look, “Free Solo” and “Lost in the Jungle” co-directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin also encourage the photographer to talk about finding a work/life balance, having a most extreme case of what most families with young children face when she can be called away to a war zone at a moment’s notice and be away for indeterminate amounts of time. Once telling her parents that she never expected to be married, Addario found happiness with Paul de Bendern, a former journalist for Reuters who became a part-time consultant to be available for their son Lukas when he knew his wife couldn’t always be herself, and as much awe as there should be for what Addario has accomplished by putting herself in harm’s way to bring attention to global crises, the film generously illustrates the support system around her that have provided stability and how much work both Addario and de Bendern put into their marriage to make it last.
While Addario covers some of the most dire humanitarian crises in the world, a hopeful picture emerges with how she is able to address blind spots both for others in her professional life and herself personally and find there’s more empathy out there in both realms than she could ever expect. Even as she shows incredible vulnerability to Vasarhelyi and Chin, admitting that she can feel helpless at times, “Love + War” becomes a remarkable profile of strength and it was a great privilege recently to speak to Addario and Vasarhelyi about turning the camera around on the photojournalist and covering so much ground in the fleet-footed biography, as well as what impact images can have.
Lynsey, I know that a lot of people have wanted to tell your story for years. What made this the right time and fit for you?
Lynsey Addario: The timing was really important because it was the start of the Ukraine war, so I knew that I was about to embark on a really big story. And as a freelance photographer, I don’t always know what the next year will bring. This was pretty clear that it was about to be this very monumental moment in history and I was very privileged to be able to cover it for The New York Times, so in that sense, the timing was right. I’m a huge fan of Chai and Jimmy’s work, and I knew “Free Solo” and just loved the way that it was shot and the nuance and the suspense. It brought in his personal life also to this man who was risking his life because of his passion and I also felt like I’d seen so many depictions of war correspondents over the years, and they were always men, so at this point, it felt like the right time to profile a woman. I was flattered that they wanted to profile me. I had been working through the option of my memoir for a fictionalized version of my life for almost eight years at that point, so a documentary felt like the way to go.
Chai, you mentioned when we last spoke for “Lost in the Jungle” that I might notice some similar themes in “Love + War.” Were you conscious of that when you started out or was it part of what drew you to this?
Chai Vasarhelyi: I just think that the worldview is similar, a broader worldview than I think what is conventionally celebrated in movies about individuals. “Love + War” is different because it’s incredibly personal to me. I’m a huge fan of Lynsey Addario’s and I think her work is important because she bears witness through her camera lens for the benefit of all of us. But as you see from the film, her personal experiences, the family she comes from, the depth of work that she’s done, it informs every image with a certain humanity and courage, so I guess my comment [was regarding how] “Lost in the Jungle” takes a similar, compassionate, courageous view and recognizes people who are often not put in the frame, much like Lynsey’s work.
Lynsey, is it interesting to have an opportunity to look back and reflect?
Lynsey Addario: I don’t often look back. I really try to just move forward and to focus on what’s ahead. Writing the memoir was a very specific point in my life and I never thought I would be writing a book. I’m a photographer. That just came about because of my experience in Libya, having been kidnapped and held for a week and what we endured, so it felt like the right time to pause and reflect on everything I’d witnessed until that point in my career. Then with the documentary, it overlapped a bit with the memoir, but at the same time, it was also opening a very new chapter in my life in like covering a war in Europe. That was definitely something that I never thought I would be covering. Most of my career had been Middle East and Africa, so that was a whole different chapter.
Chai, I know this may not have been exactly the way you found your way into this yourself, but the opening sequence is brilliant when it’s something anyone can relate to — a parent wanting to get to their kid’s recital, only in Lynsey’s case, it’s from Ukraine to England in under a day. Did time management and that parallel experience that you could connect to inform this?
Chai Vasarhelyi: Well, it’s the absurdity of war and the absurdity of real life, which becomes the absurdity of Lynsey’s life. That opening scene is really meaningful to me. One, because we wanted to throw people into the visceral experience of what it’s like to be Lynsey in the field. No one could have predicted that mother and son or grandma and son would stop in front of them and start yelling at her [in Ukraine], saying, “Why are you hiding? This is how we’ve always lived since 2014.” Then on the flip side, when she gets to London, the experience of coming out of Ukraine and having this London cabbie being like, “And how are you? It’s a beautiful day today. How are things in Ukraine?” And her just trying to have to explain that she’s trying to get to her son’s recital. You can’t write this stuff. It is the reality of Lynsey’s life, and time management is a theme of most parents’ lives. This was just an extreme example that really illustrates the price of bearing witness and the great humanity and courage that Lynsey has.
I imagine that you knew in advance that you’d have to keep your footprint small, both in Lynsey’s life on the battlefield and at home. Did you know how you could film this?
Chai Vasarhelyi: We got very lucky. Andriy Dubchak is a great, well-respected Ukrainian journalist who happens to be a Swiss Army knife of journalists in that he can also film. [He and Lynsey] were working side by side and we got lucky. It allowed this real naturalism and comfort, like being right there in her normal process. It would have been very difficult to get the New York Times to give us permission to expand their footprint and it also would have endangered the sensitivity around the work Lynsey does, so it all worked out. Likewise, we work with Thorsten Thielow, who in my opinion is one of the best cinema verite DPs out there. He’s a one-man band who has this magic and he was able to embed with Lynsey’s family and ingratiate himself with everyone. For both [cinematographers], they both work really, really hard and that’s one of the things that allows them to gain Lynsey’s respect. There’s a professional courtesy between them, which I think you see in all the footage.
Lynsey, was there anything that was important for you for this film to capture about your life or your profession?
Lynsey Addario: Yeah, it was just so important to capture everything that goes into telling these stories and covering war. We’re in an age where people are constantly disrespecting, sullying and discrediting journalists and in the most extreme of cases, they’re being targeted and killed to silence what journalists are covering. And for me, it’s so important to show that behind every photograph you see in the newspaper or in a magazine that’s reputable is a human being making huge sacrifices just to take that photo so you can be informed. That was a really important message that I wanted to get across as a journalist and as someone who’s covered conflict for over 25 years. And on a personal note, I like the idea of flipping these preconceived notions that it’s always the woman at home and the man in the field, and that my husband is fully confident in his sexuality and who he is as a person to be, “No, I’m the stay-at-home dad and I’m going to take care of the kids and I’m going to do a better job of taking care of the kids” because I wasn’t home — I’m often on the road. I think that it is important to be honest about that.
You’re bringing up some things that we’re really special about this, and I did want to highlight how it shows the life of the pictures. Was it difficult to arrive at which ones to track and show their impact?
Chai Vasarhelyi: All of the pictures are incredibly meaningful, as well as all of the assignments. That was one of the challenges of the film, which is how do you encapsulate a 25-year career that’s incredibly meaningful in which no conflict is more important than others. It was like making any film where you have to choose your beats in service of the story, but I really like that end credit sequence where you have a great cinematographer filming the moment where Lynsey takes a photograph, but then when you see the still, you see the magic of Lynsey’s eye and the craft. Those little moments delight me. And we only have one commentary on the photography itself and that’s from Kathy Ryan [the former director of the New York Times Magazine] talking about how Lynsey’s color photography and how unique and singular that is. You could have made a whole film about that, about the craft, so these hard choices that have to do with what is the film about? What is Lynsey’s truth and coming back to everything being in service of that narrative.
Lynsey, were there any pictures you were particularly keen to be part of the presentation of this?
Lynsey Addario: No, I really believe that when I agreed to do this project, I was renouncing my role as a journalist in terms of I would have no control over how Chai edited this and what her vision was. Because when I go to tell a story, my subject doesn’t dictate to me. I assume that if they were there filming when I took an important photo, or if I happened to, if they had the footage to surround an important photo that I had taken, that they would have the intuition to include that. The Korengal Valley was an important section because it was definitely an important and formative experience in my career covering conflict, as was the photo of the family killed in front of me on the bridge. We were all so lucky that Andriy had been shooting that day because I think not only was I lucky as a photographer to have had that footage to back up what we had endured and that it was an intentional targeting of civilians, but Chai and the film [itself], we were lucky because we had that footage to also be in the documentary. I had no idea he was filming that entire attack, so that was extraordinary and really lent credibility to what happened that day.
Chai Vasarhelyi: And I feel really lucky that… it’s really the subject matter that makes the film, right? And we had an incredibly rich and multidimensional participant in Lynsey and her work. As journalism is under attack now and so is democracy, there was something about the moment and the timing that made it incredibly meaningful to tell the story. Likewise with the condition of women where my daughter has less reproductive rights than I did at her age, there’s something about showing an empowered woman who is making history and also doing it all, but with her struggles and that candor is disarming. So it was this important story and figuring out all the details was hard, definitely one of those things I couldn’t say in the beginning how we’re going to do it, but it was gratifying in just that trusting the process that we would get there.
Lynsey, I got to see the film in Toronto where it was quite an ovation you were greeted with and I can’t even imagine what it was like at the London Film Fest where you’re based. What’s all this been like for you?
Lynsey Addario: It’s really overwhelming if you saw that. You saw how emotional I got just by the response. What’s surprising to me is how viscerally the film is resonating with people who see it and I’m so grateful for that because I move through life in my own little vacuum of my mind where I’m constantly torturing myself for the things I’m not doing. And am I doing a good enough job? Am I making an impact? Am I doing a service to the stories I’m telling and the people that I’m telling their stories? So when I see that reaction, it’s this validation like, “Oh, okay, I guess people get it” or they can at least go there with me. That’s a tribute to Chai and to Jimmy their filmmaking, but it really is a privilege to have that response. I’m so grateful.
“Love + War” is now open in New York at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles on October 31st at the Monica Film Center. It will be available to stream on Hulu and Disney+ beginning November 6th.