Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud

7/4/2026

Hmmm. I wasn't sure about this film. On the face of it, it provides us with a poignant critique of the dangers faced, time immemorial, by wartime journalists. Since the Crimean War, if not before, people have donned armbands or carried accreditation that is all the armour they have when they enter zones that any sane person would avoid like the plague. For just as long, they have been perishing at the hands of bullets and bombs. The fact that little of that risk appears to have been mitigated by Kevlar and PRESS in big letters written on it is writ large here in this tribute to American Brent Renaud who was shot by Russian forces whilst reporting from the Ukraine in 2022. This was a man whose career was spent in many of the world's disaster zones from Haiti and Somalia to Chicago and Kiev,