Love+War Review (2025 BFI London Film Festival)
“My head is always where I’m not,” ruminates Pulitzer Prize-winning photo-journalist Lynsey Addario, who acts as the subject of the engrossing new documentary Love+War.
Addario’s sparing yet impactful words cut to the quick of the latest film from Free Solo and Nyad filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. Love+War asks: What does it take to live in two different worlds simultaneously? What does it mean to continually sacrifice time with one’s family to plunge back into a war zone? How much pain can one absorb in their extraordinary career as a war photographer before it all boils over?
New York Times journalist Addario is renowned for her eye-opening exposés of conflicts in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In 2022, she gained a measure of acclaim and infamy when, at the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she became the first to reveal the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s forces. This is just one of the life-changing vignettes on display in Love+War, which examines both the apparent masochism of Addario’s profession and the need to arrest global attention with stories of appalling suffering.
The dichotomy in the film’s title tells us everything. Addario is happily married to fellow journalist Paul de Bendern, formerly of Reuters, and has two young sons with whom she lives in London. However, she is obligated, nee compelled, to uproot herself, following a line of duty into some of the most appalling and dangerous environments on Earth. We discover Addario’s early life, including her tumultuous yet loving relationship with three older sisters, a school of hard knocks that the film posits as the origin of her fearless nature. Vasarhelyi and Chin don’t overdo the psychoanalysis and aren’t about to impose their own interpretation of Addario’s motivations, and yet the film does an expert job of locating her in a wider context.
The effective flashback-flashforward structure encompasses Addario’s career, including an editor’s refusal to send her into a war zone when she was newly pregnant. Addario’s subsequent scorn reveals the ingrained sexism toward female war photographers, of whom, as the film tells us, there are many. Addario stands alongside the likes of Lee Miller, recently played by Kate Winslet in the 2023 biopic Lee, as someone who is willing to put everything on the line.
One of Love+War‘s most affecting strands explores Addario’s bond with a young Ukrainian teacher who is now compelled to take up arms against the Russian incursion. One senses a subtle parallel in the sacrifices made by the two women, but to their credit, Vasarhelyi and Chin allow us to discover this undertow for ourselves.
The movie is at pains to balance Addario’s prodigious skills with the self-destructive character flaws that are seemingly endemic to her job. She recalls her kidnapping at the hands of Gaddafi’s forces in 2011, a result of a reckless desire to plunge deep into the heart of the country’s most febrile areas in the midst of the emergent Arab Spring. Only in retrospect, during modern-day talking-head interviews, does she seem to reconcile with the possible devastation that could have been wrought on her relationship with Paul – this is, more often than not, filmmaking as a form of confessional.
She is also unapologetically career-oriented, admitting that although her partner wanted children immediately after marriage, she prioritised her devotion to her job over starting a family. One senses this unwavering professional devotion has a detrimental impact on the relationship with her children, who are becoming increasingly aware of her extended absences.
Love+War is a fascinating character portrait, a depiction of courage under fire at a time when the world genuinely needs reminding of such things. At the same time, what one gains in bravery and professional prestige, one threatens to lose on the domestic front. Addario’s inherent contradictions are left hanging, but our sense of admiration is never in doubt.
★★★★
On Disney+ and Hulu from November 6th / Lynsey Addario / Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin / National Geographic Documentary Films
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