Love+War

“People have a tendency to move on,” says Lynsey Addario. “It’s my job to get people to continue paying attention.” Love+War profiles the Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist as she risks her life for that mission. We follow her on several trips to Ukraine in recent years and trace her past two decades in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, and Libya — where she was kidnapped by Muammar Gaddafi’s troops — among others.

Photojournalism has long been dominated by adrenaline-chasing men who frequently succumb to addiction, divorce, or death. War correspondent Dexter Filkins observes, “Very few people have been able to do that for any sustained period of time without destroying their lives.”

Can Addario forge a different path? That’s a question at the heart of the film. We watch her commute from multi-week trips in combat zones back to her domestic life in London with her two young sons and her journalist husband Paul de Bendern. After an exhausting journey from Ukraine to put her boys to bed, she admits, “Kids are so much harder than war.”

Filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, TIFF ’18) thrive at trying to understand what motivates people driven to extremes. In Love+War, they never shy away from the complexities, contradictions, and feelings of futility that are inherent to war reportage. Addario’s work relies on faith that she’ll capture a powerful image, that news sites will give it prominent placement, and that readers will respond. We bear witness to occasions when all those things come true.

THOM POWERS

Content advisory: violence