Love+War (2025)
Directors: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
Release dates: September 7, 2025 (TIFF); October 29, 2025
Oscar winners Vasarhelyi and Chin follow photographer Lynsey Addario capturing the Ukraine war while reflecting on her Pulitzer-winning career.
* * *
Love+War (2025) | Transcript
[distant gunfire]
[panting]
[grunts]
[soldier shouting in Ukrainian]
[distant gunfire continues]
[Lynsey Addario]
How about behind that wall?
Get down.
[explosion booms] It’s locked?
[exhales heavily]
[Lynsey chuckles] Uh, this is Lynsey Addario in the village of Novoluhanske.
We’re being shelled.
Why is a woman just standing there?
They’re outgoing now or incoming?
That was incoming.
[Andriy Dubchak] It’s incoming.
Yeah.
Okay?
Oh, my God, are they crazy?
She’s not worried about her child?
[camera shutter clicking]
[Andriy] Come, come, come, come, come, come, come!
Where is the front line?
Where I am?
That direction.
Well, this probably isn’t the best place, is it?
[explosion booms]
[conversing in Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] Thank you.
[Andriy speaking Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] She doesn’t want to stay down here?
[Lynsey] Can I take her photo?
[Lynsey] What’s her name?
[camera shutter clicking]
[Jim Sciutto] [on radio] We wake up this morning to a war in Europe. The first targets hit with cruise and ballistic missiles in and around Kyiv, the capital.
[siren wailing]
[Lynsey] Oh, Jesus.
[camera shutter clicks]
[train horn blares]
[child crying]
[people chattering]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Andriy] [in English] It’s a boy and still don’t have name.
[man] The building next to my house.
In the first time in my life, I do not know what to do.
[Lynsey] That’s crazy.
[chanting in Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] And you’re a teacher?
Are you scared?
Of course.
[speaking English]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Lynsey] Of course.
[steam hissing]
[distant sirens wailing]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Katie Couric] Lynsey, where are you right now?
[Lynsey] I’m in Kyiv.
Things are getting very tense.
You’re in the center of the city, and it’s a target.
Why are you staying there?
Because, uh, you know, it’s sort of, when you do this, I think we’ve learned that you want to be where, like, sort of power in numbers.
All the journalists together.
That’s what we’ve… There’s…
It’s not like there’s anywhere particularly that’s safe.
[on radio] We’ve seen instances all over the country where the Ukrainians have really pushed back…
[Lynsey] When the New York Times asked if there is a war in Ukraine, would you like to cover it? I jumped on the opportunity. I didn’t have to think very long because I knew it would be a really historic moment.
[Lynsey] And there’s just, like, a whole underground operation, literally in the bunker.
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
What did he say?
[Andriy speaking English]
[Lynsey] Okay, let’s go quick.
I started working with Andriy Dubchak before the war started.
[both laugh]
[speaking Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] In Ukraine, he’s a very well-known photographer and videographer. And what is the name of this weapon?
He’s basically my partner.
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] Okay, let me see.
So we have some dried foods.
The cookies. Because every time we go to the grocery store, I buy cookies. [Chuckles] A sleeping mat in case you guys end up in the bunker.
We have water in the tub in case they cut the water.
We can flush the toilet. [Laughs] Or we could take a bath with that.
[Andriy] Any good news? Bad news?
There’s smoke. A lot of smoke.
Look.
[Andriy] A lot of smoke, yeah.
[Lynsey] So we can’t see it.
So can you situate me for a second?
Yeah. So basically… Yeah.
So, obviously, that’s the front line over there.
You can hear the small arms fire, and it sounds like antitank weapons going off.
So that may be the start of the assault.
[Lynsey] Yeah.
[Bungay] I suggest we start moving.
Okay.
Let’s go.
Come on.
[distant siren wailing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Lynsey] They let the man go right in front.
They don’t like to see women here.
I always get kicked away.
You can go where you want.
It’s like the story of my life.
[camera shutter clicking]
[distant gunfire]
Just here, less exposure.
[Andriy] Yeah.
[indistinct]
[Lynsey] They’re fucking aiming at the civilians?
[Andriy] Yep.
[horn blaring]
[explosion booms]
[Lynsey] Shit.
Where’d that land?
Fuck, right by the people.
[sirens wailing]
[distant gunfire]
[explosion booms]
[debris clattering]
[Lynsey] Shit!
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
[camera shutter clicking]
[soldier shouts]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Lynsey] Shit! Am I bleeding?
Am I bleeding?
[Andriy] No, no.
[Lynsey] Alright.
[Bungay] Stay there!
[Lynsey] Alright.
Come on! Medic!
Medic!
[soldiers shouting] Oh, fuck, it’s a person.
[Bungay] Be careful.
They’re really sensitive. Move!
[Lynsey] Oh!
[Bungay] Come on…
[Bungay] You stay.
[Lynsey] Oh, fuck!
Fucking killing civilians.
I fucking hate these bastards.
[Andriy] Lynsey, go, go.
[Lynsey] Get down.
[explosion booms]
[newsreader] [on TV] The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing.
[Lynsey] I messaged my editor lobbying to publish the picture because I witnessed this civilian evacuation route be targeted intentionally. That’s a war crime. But none of us knew who the people were in the photos. What if there’s a family member that finds out because of your photograph?
[newsreader] President Putin speaking today…
[Lynsey] They had to make the decision whether to go with that risk or not.
[speaking Russian]
[translator] In terms of the military tactics, they’re doing everything they can to avoid loss of civilian life in Ukrainian cities.
[Lynsey] I made the case that this is exactly when Putin was saying that he was not targeting civilians.
[explosion booms]
[debris clatters]
[Lynsey] And I said I was in this attack. It was intentional.
[Bungay] Stay there!
[Lynsey] Alright.
That photograph did end up opening the eyes of many people in the world as to the consequences of Putin going in to a sovereign country and firing on a civilian population. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied his forces are targeting civilians.
But on Sunday, the world saw the truth for itself.
[Jim Axelrod] This image was published on the front page of The New York Times today. It is the un-sanitized view of war. In Ukraine, one picture has starkly illustrated the cost of the conflict.
The photo was taken by Pulitzer Prizewinning photojournalist Lynsey Addario.
And it’s become one of the defining images of this war.
[Margaret Hoover] It was even used as an exhibit in a speech on the Senate floor by Dick Durbin.
[Lynsey] I’ve covered so many wars, but it was probably the first time that there was such a visceral, widespread reaction to one of my photographs.
[♪ Intense music playing]
[woman speaking Ukrainian]
[interviewer] Mmhmm.
[Lynsey] Oh, I remember she was wearing this.
Oh, Jesus.
[interviewer] Mmhmm.
[camera shutter clicks]
[♪ somber music playing]
♪
♪
[car door closes]
[engine starts]
[driver] We will stop on the petrol station, okay?
[Lynsey] Yep.
[driver] You drink coffee maybe
if you like.
[Lynsey] Okay.
[driver] We are going to Balice, to the airport, right?
Or to the hotel?
[Lynsey] To Krakow. Airport.
I’m trying to go to my son’s music concert tonight.
[driver] Oh, super.
[♪ “Elefante” by NK playing]
♪ Gigante ♪
♪ Hey ♪
♪ Let me take you to the zoo ♪
♪ Zoo, zoo, zoo zoo, zoo, zoo ♪
♪ Zoo, zoo, zoo zoo, zoo, zoo ♪
♪ I like the way you do it me gusta ♪
♪ Stop! No seas tan adusto ♪
♪ Hey ♪
♪ Gigante ♪
[driver] How’s your day been?
Uh, fine.
[driver] Yeah. Good, good.
Enjoying the good weather?
Uh, I haven’t… I just landed.
Have you? From where?
Uh, Ukraine.
Oh, really?
Welcome to London.
Thanks.
So civilized.
[driver] How’s things over there?
Uh, they’re…
[driver] I know, obviously…
Yeah. They’re rough.
[Paul de Bendern] Hey.
[Lynsey] Okay, maybe I should quick jump in the shower.
So what time do you want to leave?
I’ve gained weight since you’ve been away.
No, you didn’t.
[Paul] Yeah, I have.
It was too stressful.
You have?
What, you’ve been drinking?
[Paul] Well, I’ve been eating.
Someone’s been drinking.
[Paul] I have not been eating good.
Uh, I have been exercising, but…
That’s funny.
Yes. I have to go on a diet.
You can go on the Ukraine diet if you want.
[Paul] Yeah, you…
[Lynsey] It’s called stress.
[both laugh]
Well, you made it back.
[Lynsey] Alive. That was a feat.
Oh, there he is.
[gasps] Oh!
[laughs]
Come on.
Hey!
Hi, my love! Hi!
Mwah! Hi.
[Lukas] Hi.
Oh, boy. You’ve never hugged me like that.
[Paul] The first one was, uh…
[Paul] That was a very good performance.
[Lynsey] Very good.
[Paul] How can you remember all of that?
[Lynsey] This morning, I left Ukraine, drove to Poland, flew to London, took a train from Gatwick, and got here on time for your performance.
[Alfred] Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
Uh, you fall down, not up.
Fall up! Fall up!
Yeah.
[Paul] Maybe, Lynsey, you can read the night story first.
[Alfred] Get it! Get it!
You’re back.
Get it! Get it! Get it!
[Paul] [laughs] Yeah.
You only have five weeks to…
I don’t really…
[Paul] Five weeks. You get no mercy.
I’m not really up for reading a bedtime story.
[Paul] No, no, you just do a short one and then…
Oh, Paul.
[Paul] Alfred. Alfred.
Do you want Mommy to read you a good night story?
[Lynsey laughs]
[Alfred] Yeah.
[laughing] This sucks so bad.
“She lived with her mean stepmother “and her two silly stepsisters.
Cinderella did everything for her lazy family.”
Oh, yeah, that’s much better.
So when was the last time Lukas had a bath?
[Paul] Um
that’s a good question. Um…
Fuck!
[Paul] He did have a shower…
I mean, seriously, Paul.
Yeah, I think he probably had something…
[Lynsey] That was like five days ago.
That was on Sunday, Holi, wasn’t it?
[Lynsey] Alright.
So do you want to walk to school tomorrow?
Yeah.
Really?
Wow. You must really have missed me.
Is that Lukas or Alfred?
Lukas.
What time does he go to bed?
[Paul] 8:15.8:30.
What do you have to do to put him to bed these days?
[Paul] [laughing] You’ve forgotten?
[laughing] Yeah, I have forgotten.
Bed.
[Lukas] Okay, you don’t know how we do it.
Then we watch a Modern Family.
[Lynsey] Now?
[Lukas] Yes.
Go get Daddy.
[Lukas] Okay.
Not with your iPad.
I know.
[Alfred wailing]
Oh, my God, kids are so much harder than war.
[laughing] Oh, God.
[Alfred continues wailing]
Um…
I have all of the front pages here.
Then that one.
Yeah, I like that one.
That’s the other one.
And then this is a very good one.
This one, obviously.
You know, the video of them when they were getting mortared.
I mean, she didn’t tell me about that.
And I saw it on, on Twitter obviously first.
And she says to me, “Oh, shit.
Yeah, yeah, I didn’t think you’d see that.”
So that was stressful. But if you keep thinking about those things, it’s going to drive you nuts. So I don’t.
I would have used the other photo.
I know…
[Paul] I was a journalist running the Reuters bureau.
So I think if we both were going to do 24hour news, I mean, it’s just difficult, right?
There’s very few who are both journalists and have a family.
And that’s not even when you’re going to a danger zone.
It’s just the news cycle.
It’s kind of impossible.
[Lynsey] Oh, my God, I’m so tired.
[Paul] I didn’t want her to change. To be who she isn’t.
[Lynsey groans]
Hi, Mom. Say hi to Paul.
Hi, Camille. How’s it going?
Hi. Are you happy, boy? I am. It’s good to have her back.
Now, I don’t have to get up at 5:20 every morning.
[Camille] I know! [laughs]
It’s the only reason he’s happy.
[Lynsey] When I first met him, I remember thinking, like, who is this arrogant guy, you know?
I thought she was really loud, American.
[Lynsey] But we had become really, really good friends.
They’re totally, totally different backgrounds.
Lynsey was brought up by hairdressers.
[Phillip Addario] Paul comes from a kind of wealthy family.
His father is a count, and he’s a count or something, I don’t know.
Um, yeah. I mean, I grew up very privileged, you know.
My father grew up all his life in France.
As a kid, he lived in a big marble castle outside Monaco, where we had a big private zoo.
Being in a relationship was something I always sort of romanticized.
But the way I throw myself into my work, it’s all-consuming.
Most people can’t deal with that.
I never expected I would find someone like Paul.
You know, I was running my teams and editing and writing and doing breaking news.
I’d say, okay, I’m going, you know, to Afghanistan for a month.
And he’d say, okay.
I knew I’d marry him.
[guests cheering, applauding]
[whistling]
[Alice Gabriner] She sent a mass email to a group of women saying, “Guess what? I’m pregnant.”
The next email was to me alone to say, “And by the way, I still want to do that story.”
That’s very much Lynsey.
[Christopher Dickey] You have a 10weekold baby. I do.
Are you going to keep doing this?
Do you ask men that question?
[audience cheering, applauding]
[Lynsey] It’s the question I’ve gotten probably 300 times in the last 10 weeks.
I’ve only had a baby 10 weeks.
I started working three months after giving birth, but I sort of slipped in the roster of who to call when there were big stories. Some editors gave me assignments, stories that were a little softer and less political. But I’m a conflict photographer. I do this work because I want to have impact, and I want to affect policy. And to take that away from me really became like an identity crisis. I started doubting everything about myself and my career.
In 2018, I asked the foreign picture editor if I can cover Mosul, and he said, “I’m not sending you Mosul.
You’re a mother now.”
I said, “Look, if you have an issue with me”, “I will provide you tomorrow with a list of ten women you need to be hiring for The New York Times.” He sits back, and he had a whiskey in his hand, I’ll never forget.
He sits back like this, and he has a whiskey.
And he was like, um, “I’ve worked for the New York Times for seven years, “and there just are no women in the world good enough for The New York Times.”
[Gabriner] There’s very much a narrative today that the profession has been dominated by men.
But there have been women photographing war from the beginning of war photography.
[Meaghan Looram] The main challenge is being underestimated.
The assumption is a female photographer is somehow less equipped, covering conflict and covering high risk stories.
We want to really strive for the visual authors of our journalism to be as reflective of the world that we’re trying to cover as possible which means that you need the widest possible representation.
[Gabriner] Cameras are in the hands of more people than ever before. That’s shifting the kinds of pictures we see, the stories we’re seeing.
[Lynsey] So much happens in war that is meant to never be seen.
[camera shutter clicks]
[people shouting] In the Iraq War, I remember just witnessing all this brutality. I realized the fundamental importance of journalism. That was the moment where I thought, this is everything to me. I knew that I wouldn’t do anything else ever.
[Dexter Filkis] You know, she’s really good at what she does. What that means, like, really fundamentally, is you go into, like, these really terrible places where most people wouldn’t go in a million years.
You kind of find your way in, and you capture the human drama, like in a second, and then you get out.
And she’s really good at that.
You know, the proof of that is, is in her pictures and that she’s still alive.
We were in Iraq for the worst of the war. The Americans came and, like, the country disintegrated into anarchy. And we were in the middle of that.
[priest] [on speaker] Allahu Akbar!
[Lynsey] People didn’t have electricity. They couldn’t get propane for cooking. They couldn’t get money out of the banks.
[camera shutter clicks]
Chaos.
The protests…
[gunshot, people screaming]
[Lynsey] …kind of the genesis of the insurgency. I wanna do a raid story. Like a mystery.
[Filkis] We all lived in a house together. The New York Times.
There were about five reporters and a couple photographers. I think we had 45 armed gunmen protecting the place.
We had blast walls, uh, belt-fed machine guns.
It was a fortress.
It was like a fullon fortress.
[newscaster] Eyewitnesses say gunmen opened fire, killing at least four foreigners inside. But the victims were wearing civilian clothes and bulletproof vests, commonly used by foreign contractors, the media…
[Filkis] Before the invasion of Iraq, there was still this kind of unwritten rule that, like, you don’t kill American reporters.
Completely different.
Um, we were targets.
They were coming after us.
[♪ Tense music playing]
Lynsey and another reporter, Jeffrey, got in a car. They decided to go to Fallujah. Terrible place. Very dangerous.
[horn honks]
[gunshots]
[people shouting]
[automatic gunfire]
[Filkis] They got kidnapped. They saw Jeffrey and they said, we got an American. They took him to their car.
You know, that’s the end.
My first instinct is they’re gonna kill him.
And so I jumped out of the car after Jeffrey and grabbed his arm and said, “This man’s my husband.”
“He’s my husband.” Like this, you know.
Immediately, “Where are you from? What are you doing here?”
And, of course, the last thing you want to be in Iraq at that point was an American.
So I took my two passports and managed to slip them in my underwear under my a bay a.
We’re journalists. I’m Italian. He’s Greek.
[Filkis] She saved him. They didn’t know what to do.
And they finally said, okay, like, get out of here.
And they let him go.
Um, that close.
[Lynsey] Before that happened, I thought I was invincible. Journalists have definitely become targets more and more.
[automatic gunfire]
Not only killed, but kidnapped, beaten, threatened. That is happening increasingly around the world.
She is the twelfth Al Jazeera journalist killed.
[newscaster 1] He was apparently beheaded by ISIS militants.
[newscaster 2]
Shelled by the Syrian military.
[soldiers speaking Ukrainian]
[Andriy] [in English] Go, go, go.
[Lynsey] No helmet?
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
[Andriy] [in English] He’s immortal.
Oh, fuck me. That’s like…
Don’t say that.
Jesus Christ, there’s no wood.
Where are the Russian positions?
[Andriy] [in English] We drive just to Russian positions.
[Andriy and soldier laugh]
[Andriy] Could be mines.
[Lynsey] Oh, Jesus Christ.
[Andriy] Be careful.
[gun clicking]
Tell me a little about your life before you joined the military.
Oh, now I know that I have a really great life before war.
I read a lot.
It was really simple but really great life. [Chuckles]
[Lynsey] Yulia is one of the soldiers I met on the second day of the war who was a teacher. The response to that photograph of her was huge. And, like, it encapsulated so much of people who are just offering themselves up despite how scared they are. And so my idea is to follow her for a year.
Did you imagine yourself, like, getting married and having children?
And what do you think now about your future?
No, it’s really scared to have children because I know that I can do different things.
I don’t be afraid about myself.
But if I have children, it will be very difficult for me.
[Lynsey] Are we in the quadrant of the city
that gets hit all the time?
[Andriy] Yeah.
[Lynsey] And we’re next to a military base.
[Andriy] Yeah.
[Lynsey] Oh, fuck.
Not very far away.
[Michael Schwirtz] No, no.
[explosion booms]
Fucking hell.
[man] It’s close.
[Lynsey] Very close.
[Schwirtz] Should we not stay here?
[Andriy] Yeah, probably.
Let’s go to the hospital.
[Schwirtz] Should we go to the hospital?
[Lynsey] Some of the best stories are in the most dangerous places. I have to constantly weigh what will I risk my life for?
[camera shutter clicking]
And it’s often civilians.
[woman speaking Ukrainian]
Those missiles you say that have no shrapnel.
This is why bombs are lethal.
Because this flies through you and you die.
[♪ Intense music playing]
[Lynsey] We were in Zaporizhzhia photographing the exodus out of Mariupol. And it was while Mariupol was still under siege. There were families who had lived underground for six weeks. Most people didn’t make it out. And the people who did, they were just destroyed. I heard a girl crying. She and her mother escaped the week before. And they left her 18yearold sister behind because her 18yearold sister had a boyfriend that she didn’t want to leave. The girl thought she would never see her sister again. And her sister pulled up a week later.
[camera shutter clicks]
♪ I do my hair toss check my nails ♪
♪ Baby, how you feeling?
Feeling good as hell! ♪
[Andriy speaking English]
[♪ Upbeat music playing on car stereo]
[Schwirtz] Going to sleep thinking, I hope a missile doesn’t come through my window at night.
Because we’ve been all been sleeping in buildings where, you know, that are next door to buildings where the missile has come in and simply by chance not been in them.
♪ If it makes you happy ♪
[Andriy speaking English]
[phone ringing]
Hi, Lyns.
[Lynsey] Hi, Mom.
How are you? Good. You’re frozen.
So I was supposed to leave today, but there’s a curfew.
Leave to come home? Oh, thank God.
Don’t jinx it. I told Lisa that, she…
No, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not jinxing it. I’m just happy to see your face. Because I don’t turn on the TV. Yeah.
Yeah. Better you don’t.
Uh, it’s all fine.
There’s nothing. It’s fine.
We’re totally safe here.
One of us would check in, and we would just relay, like, Lyns is fine, you know.
And then we would send it out to the parents. To us.
That happened twice a day the entire time she’s in Ukraine.
[Lauren] Yeah, yeah. So morning and evening check-ins.
[laughter]
[Lynsey] I’m the youngest of four girls, so I always looked up to my sisters and wanted to be with them.
She was a little…
She was a whiner.
Kind of a pain in the ass, but fearless.
Like, from the day that she was born.
She didn’t learn how to swim.
She just jumped in the pool and started swimming.
The two middle ones were attached to the hip, and they always picked on her.
[Lisa] We would hang signs around her neck when she was sleeping that said, like, “I’m ugly.”
Apparently, I opened up a can of soda and poured it over her head.
But we often say that that’s what made her who she is today.
[Lisa] Yeah.
Because we toughened her up, and we were relentless.
[Lisa] She was at war.
[Leslie] Yeah.
[♪ Soul music playing]
[Lynsey] My parents were both hairdressers in Connecticut.
There were a lot of creative people that worked for us, and we had a lot of creative friends.
[Lynsey] They had parties constantly.
[sister 1] Drag queens dressed up.
[sister 2] It was very colorful.
Everybody was welcome.
Always welcome.
Nonjudgmental.
I think that’s probably more than anything.
[Lynsey] I didn’t grow up in a family where we went to museums or galleries on the weekend. We were anything but intellectual. You know, we didn’t even have books in our house growing up. I remember our family being really happy. And then when I was eight, I remember my mom just, like, piling us into the car and driving to the parking lot and saying, your dad is going to live with a friend in New York and he’s not coming back.
And I thought, oh, he’s going to live with a roommate, like he’s going to live with a friend.
You know, I had no idea.
I did not connect the dots at all.
He was married, so I assumed he wasn’t gay.
But obviously I knew he was gay when he approached me.
[Lisa] The transition from him being our mom’s best friend to being our dad’s boyfriend was rougher on our mom, obviously.
For us, it didn’t seem like a betrayal because it was all very friendly, but it was like the talk of the town.
And that part was really, really hard.
[Lynsey] I really struggled with my dad. We were always in touch.
I would go to his house. But there was a lot of, like, underlying resentment. One of the clients gave my dad a camera, and he gave it to me when I was like 12 or 13. I was obsessed, and I would just stay in the dark room until all hours of the night. I wasn’t really aware of photojournalism. I studied international relations and Italian at University of Wisconsin, but when I graduated, all I wanted to do was photograph. I realized that you can tell stories with pictures. And then my camera became this sort of excuse for walking in and out of, like, any situation, I could just sort of say, “I want to take pictures. Can I come in?” So I was traveling and kind of meeting people because I had a camera.
[thunder rumbling]
[Alfred] Mom!
Mom!
[Paul] Alfred.
[Lynsey] You want more bread, Alfie?
Cheese!
Alfred, are you going to be a photographer like Mummy?
Yeah!
[Lynsey] He’s not allowed to be a photographer!
[newscaster] Fears of renewed strikes by Russian forces. More than five and a half thousand civilians are thought to have been killed in the fighting.
Lukas?
Yeah. I’m just…
I’m putting this away.
What is that?
[Lynsey] Nothing.
What is this?
What is it?
It’s a plate.
From my vest.
Lukas is definitely becoming more aware, but he has a lot of, like, protective mechanisms where he just either shuts down or he pretends like it doesn’t matter. He kind of just doesn’t talk about anything.
[man] [on TV] When the left balance of the universe…
[Paul] The teacher said Alfred cried when another mom the kids said he’s seeing Mom after school.
And Alfred…
Oh, great, why don’t you just make me feel a little worse?
[laughing] Why don’t you?
Holy crap.
He was crying,
and Sarah had to cuddle him.
Oh, God.
[Paul] It was a bit sensitive.
[Lynsey] When I’m not shooting, I’m so stretched thin. I’m trying to close stories, edit, caption. All of this is very much on deadline.
[Paul] Since the war, she’s been gone quite a lot, you know.
One month in Ukraine, then maybe back two weeks, then maybe speaking engagement or an exhibition and then back a little bit.
[Alfred] Your name is Mommy?
Yeah, my name is Mommy.
[Paul] Then Ukraine and then something else.
[tribe chanting]
[Paul] If you want to stay relevant, you got to be available all the time.
She’s worried about it. Gets older.
You know, if she doesn’t do these things, even if she’s an amazing photographer, you know, they won’t assign her.
[Alfred babbling]
[Lynsey] One of us has to be a constant in the kids’ lives. Paul left Reuters.
He started doing consulting.
That enabled us to have a family.
Nice?
Yeah.
You like it?
He’s the one the school calls.
He’s the one who goes to all the PTA meetings. He’s the one who takes them to school in the morning. I’ve set it up so that if something does happen to me, they have Paul.
[singing indistinctly]
So are you training every day now?
Yes.
[Lynsey] And are you still scared?
Um. You know, I’m, uh…
All these weeks, I couldn’t cry.
I don’t know why, because I saw terrible videos, photos with, uh, that people, children…
Uh, but now I’m just angry, and I’m not afraid now.
[camera shutter clicks]
I know I’m gonna regret not going to the forest position
if I don’t go.
You are?
Yeah, of course I am.
I always regret everything.
You will regret going if you lose your legs, so, I mean…
I know.
[indistinct chatter]
[Lynsey] Does anyone actually man this weapon or do they just keep it here?
We are waiting, ma’am, for the…
Oh, we’re wait…
They’re putting their makeup on.
Oh, my God.
The nose.
You definitely know you’re too far from the front line if the soldiers have to go put their flak jackets on for the media.
II can’t deal with this.
Should we just go somewhere else?
I’ll take a picture so they’re happy because they put on clothes for the camera.
They probably bring journalists here every day.
I’m in such a bad mood, and this light is so bad.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Schwirtz] I don’t want to be on the front.
I need to be on the front.
It’s too dangerous at the front.
Why are we at the front?
Welcome to the inner workings of my brain.
A war zone doesn’t mean there’s, like, active combat in every single part of the country. In Ukraine, there are certain places that get hit more than others. But, like, in Kyiv, life goes on. Ukraine has always been one of the top places for surrogacy around the world. When the war started, those families couldn’t come and pick up their babies.
[laughs]
[Lynsey] And there were so many women who were pregnant with other people’s babies.
Without face.
Without face. Okay.
And the kids are okay.
Okay. She doesn’t know anyone in the US at least.
Yeah, but it… just…
In case they’re on the internet or…
[surrogate speaking Ukrainian]
[camera shutter clicks]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Lynsey] These women who give birth for other women are sort of like these angels. You know, they come in, and they bring life in situations where not everyone can. We had a surrogate for Alfred, and so, of course, I felt that connection. I had a big car accident in 2009,
[doctor] Deep breath.
Where I was thrown out of a car on a highway in Pakistan. My back got progressively worse over the years, and after I gave birth to Lukas, everything kind of fell apart. When we were thinking about having another child, for me, it just didn’t even seem like a possibility.
[nurse] You okay?
Yeah.
I spend most of my free time just getting strong again to go on assignment.
[gasps] Oh, shit.
I did it!
[grunting]
Only 20 kilos.
Exercise is a major part of my life.
[panting]
It’s how I ground myself. It’s where I give myself the space to process things. It’s the only way I’m going to be able to stay in this profession longer than a few years. This is my life, you know.
[Lisa] She is on a mission, always, singly focused and singly driven about what she needs to do in the world.
She will do that at all costs.
When each of us got married, our dads gave us $10,000 for our wedding gift.
Lyns went to Dad and Bruce and said, “I’m never getting married, so I want the ten grand to buy camera equipment.”
[Lynsey] In the late ’90s, I worked for the AP.
[camera shutter clicking]
But my interest has always been abroad, so I moved to India in 2000. I started becoming aware of women’s issues…
[woman chanting]
And the fact that most women around the world don’t have any basic rights. Going to Afghanistan under the Taliban. Girls are only allowed to stay in school until they’re about 12. Women were not able to leave the house without their husband’s permission or work outside of the home. Many had been abused or been forced into arranged marriages. When I first started working in Afghanistan, I couldn’t give away those pictures for free.
And then September 11th happened.
[explosion booms]
[people screaming]
[Kathy Ryan] Just when all the news organizations were trying to figure out all those different stories related to the aftermath of what had happened, she had the idea.
She said she wanted to tell the story of the women of the jihad.
[Lynsey] Showing a true picture of this community that very few people knew what really happened behind closed doors.
[Ryan] The kind of work she does, a lot of people choose to go to black and white, which allows you to do something a little bit more metaphorical or poetic.
Not her.
Partly what defines a great photojournalist is the eye and the ability to make memorable images, but also to be able to go out and find the story, get access to the story.
[Lynsey] In western Afghanistan, it was very common for a woman who wanted to commit suicide, she would douse herself in gasoline or some sort of oil and set herself on fire, often not dying.
I spent, like, a week in a hospital, in a burn unit, watching, like, woman after woman, sometimes girls, come in, like, charred to a crisp, and you smell them before you see them.
All of them had been abused.
And I realized, like, that’s why women are setting themselves on fire.
Because anything is better than their lives.
And I remember getting, like, so overwhelmed.
I can’t do this. Like, I can’t internalize, like, this pain and this, like, abuse.
I was overwhelmed with this sense of injustice.
I realized that I can really get into the lives of women with my camera and with reporting.
[Alfred] With who?
[Lynsey] Hmm?
Hmm.
[Ryan] Lynsey has a very distinct ability to go places men are not welcome, right? So she can cover huge parts of the story that they can’t.
She wants to make pictures that are stark and show the reality as close as she can, hoping that it will have an effect.
[child crying]
[Lynsey] When I met Mamma Sessay, she had delivered the first twin in the village, and the second baby wouldn’t come out. She had to take a canoe to the ambulance, in the ambulance on bumpy roads for about six hours to get to the hospital.
Oh, my God!
She finally delivered the second baby.
What is this?
What’s all the blood from, the placenta?
At that point, I didn’t know anything about childbirth.
60/40?
[midwife] Yeah.
[Lynsey] She’s becoming more and more out of it. So I stopped photographing, and I said to the midwives, “Where is the doctor?”
Well, there’s one doctor in the whole province, and he’s probably in surgery.
So I ran to the surgical ward, and I said, “I think there’s a woman dying.”
And at this point, I’m obviously involved, which I, you know, I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m watching a woman dying.
The doctor came out, took her blood pressure. And she was dead.
[women crying]
[camera shutter clicking]
At that time, over 500,000 women a year were dying in childbirth, and a majority of those cases were completely preventable.
I wanted it to be published so that perhaps it could bring some sort of change.
[Paul] Hi, Alfred.
You should still be asleep.
It’s only 6:30. Come, come.
[Alfred babbling]
Come, come.
No, no, no, no. It’s 6:30, Alfred.
Come on, come on.
I’ll take you to your room.
I’m hungry.
Yeah, but in a minute. Come on.
Alfred.
[Alfred] Where’s my…
Where’s my mummy?
Mummy is working, Alfred.
Is she downstairs?
She’s in another country, but she’s going to come back soon.
There you go.
[Alfred] But you have to say cheers.
Cheers.
Cheers.
[announcer] [on PA system] British Airways. Flight eight…
[Paul] It’s the length of assignments. That’s always been the challenge in our relationship.
If it’s one week, two weeks, it’s not really a big deal.
But when it gets longer, over three weeks is always…
Things tend to unravel at home.
Careful, Alfred. Ahah!
[Alfred] Okay! Okay!
Snap! Snap!
[Lynsey] In my heart, all I want to be doing is shooting.
[camera shutter clicking]
It’s frustrating. I’m constantly tortured. Like, I’m not in the right place. But I come back. I’m supposed to be really happy, and I feel like I should be there, and I feel like a bad journalist because I’m not. My head is always where I’m not.
Hi, Lukas.
[Lukas] [on phone] When are you coming back?
Oh, like ten days.
[Lukas] Oh.
I know, my love.
[Paul] It’s the compromise, right?
She wants to do all of the things and be at home as well.
And it’s just not possible.
Everything has gotten delayed.
I may not get home till Saturday.
I suck as a parent. I suck as a journalist.
I’m always compromising.
I can’t do it. I’ll switch with someone.
[Paul] No, no, no, no.
This is what you gotta do.
[crying] He’s asked for it constantly.
This is Alfred’s thing.
I mean, are you seriously not gonna… Why don’t you just be a mother?
[Alfred] Daddy, Daddy, I love you.
[Paul] With Alfred, all of a sudden, there was mega regression. Wetting the bed and stuff.
[newscaster] A fresh round of missiles pummeled Ukraine this weekend. Hardest hit this residential…
[Paul] With Lukas, there will be moments when he sees Ukraine missiles stuff on TV. I don’t really know what you do to, to prevent the kind of anxiety being created, you know.
[newscaster] …pitch darkness, rescue workers raced overnight.
[rocket whooshing]
[Lynsey] God.
[explosion booms] Here we can shoot, right?
[Andriy] Let’s go. Yeah.
[Lynsey]
The Russians entered this town?
Oh, my God. We picked the wrong fucking day.
[Schwirtz] When you’re working in a war zone, you really are timing things down to the minute.
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
[Schwirtz] Lynsey is conscious of those limits, but she wants to take it right up to that edge, to where we’re both feeling pretty uncomfortable about being in a place.
Lynsey will just continue to press and press and press until she gets what she needs.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Lynsey] Oh, Jesus.
Fuck. Fuck. I hate this.
People always ask me, and I know they ask Lynsey the same thing, are you addicted to the adrenaline?
You know, are you, like, a war junkie?
[camera shutter clicking]
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
[Filkis] Very few people have been able to do that for any sustained period of time without destroying their lives.
All you have to do is, like, look at the scorecard.
Divorced. Divorced. Divorced.
Having an affair. Drinks too much.
[newscaster] In a massive show of force not seen since the Cold War…
[Filkis] I think what you are addicted to is the largeness of it.
[newscaster 2] Possibly the biggest land war that Europe has seen since the Second World War.
[Filkis] These countries, they change so fast.
[camera shutter clicking]
[newscaster 3] Ukrainian troops recaptured Kherson this month.
[Filkis] It’s like history on fast forward. Everything’s accelerated. It’s an amazing thing to be in the middle of. You’re breathing pure oxygen the whole time.
[Lynsey] I’m most present when I’m working. I feel like I’m home. I feel most inspired and exhilarated when I’m covering something that I know will contribute to the historical picture of what happened. The fall of the Taliban. The Iraq War. The Korangal Valley in Afghanistan. When we asked to go to the Korangal Valley, it was the place where the United States was dropping the most bombs in the country.
[camera shutter clicking]
The Pentagon would not allow women soldiers on the front line. But there was not the same mandate for journalists.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Colonel Daniel P. Kearney] Every single day, the platoons had to go out and patrol. Instead of carrying weapons, Lynsey would have, like, cameras and lenses strapped to her all over the place.
Almost like clockwork on their way back, they would get shot at. If they weren’t physically fit enough, they would put us in danger.
But those two women are they’re hard as woodpecker lips.
They earned our trust very quickly.
[Lynsey] We spent more or less two months with these guys and had various conversations, talked about their lives, what they wanted to do when they got out.
[Colonel Kearney] Rock Avalanche was the most arduous operation they were both a part of.
[Lynsey] The idea was to jump out of helicopters in the middle of the night into the heart of Taliban territory, assuming the Taliban would fire at us so that the US military could fire back, and it would basically show their position.
[soldier] We could get one going from west to east into that, over.
[soldier 2] Over.
[explosion booms]
[Colonel Kearney]
We had Tim He the ring ton. He was with one platoon.
We had Lynsey and Elizabeth, were located with me.
And we know something’s about to happen. We just don’t know when it’s going to happen. We don’t know where it’s going to come from. Trees blocked you from ever being able to see the enemy. So it was like you were fighting ghosts.
[wings flapping]
Throughout the whole time, Lynsey, I don’t want to say she’s begging, but she’s being very persistent.
She wants to be where the fight is going to potentially be.
And almost as soon as Lynsey got down there, the valley erupted.
[automatic gunfire]
[Lynsey] It was so chaotic in the moment. There were bullets everywhere. We were ambushed from three sides. There were three people down.
And then I see them coming out holding the body bag.
I started crying, and I stopped and I said, “Is it okay?
Like, can I, can I take a picture?”
And he said, “Yeah.”
[camera shutter clicking]
[Colonel Kearney]
There’s a lot that we ask our soldiers at a young, young age. You probably question the same stuff that I did every single night, “What am I doing here?” Our nation needs to understand what the cost of war is. What Lynsey and everybody in that profession does, I think it’s critical. It’s-it’s more than just a profession.
It’s almost a duty or a calling.
[Lynsey] War is always so distant because of the ban on photographing caskets coming back to America.
The price that so many thousands of families have paid that no one ever documents, either because we’re censored or we’re not there or we can’t get permission to publish.
I do not agree that we should censor war. When we make a decision to invade a country, people have to understand the consequences.
[soldier speaking Ukrainian]
[camera shutter clicking]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Lynsey] All of this coverage provides the international community with proof of how Russians dealt with people and treated people and killed people.
[Andriy speaking Ukrainian]
[camera shutter clicking]
[war crimes prosecutor Speaking Ukrainian]
[Lynsey] How are you feeling now?
Did you think you would still be here?
Um… [chuckles] The first days, I hope, uh, that war will finish maybe in a few months.
And now I understand that it can be years and years.
The first two weeks or ten days, I didn’t know who I am. It was terrible for me because I know that I am a teacher, I’m Yulia, I’m a friend, I’m a daughter.
[laughter]
Such a big face.
Me too. When I was that age, I had a big face.
Aww.
[camera shutter clicks]
[whispers indistinctly]
[♪ Somber music playing]
[camera shutter clicking]
[Yulia] [in English] Now I know who I am. I have new friends. I have new family.
[camera shutter clicks]
[chuckles]
[Lynsey] The amount of difficult stories that I’ve done, it’s, it’s a lot.
And so I wonder where all that lives in my head and my heart.
You know, it’s like I know it’s there, and I know I speak about it very sort of methodically, but it’s hard to look at.
It’s a strange way to…
It’s a strange way to live because… Lynsey, for instance, like she’s seeing, she’s seeing a lot of pain, often every day.
So you basically condition yourself to, like, put that in a box, you know, turn the key.
Maybe Lukas should have this for dinner.
[Alfred] [laughing] No.
[Paul laughs] Mommy’s gonna love that dinner, Alfred.
It’s making me look good. Now!
Are you looking forward to seeing her?
Yep.
Hmm? How much?
More.
More than what?
Anything.
She’s a worker a photographer and a worker.
[doorbell rings]
Oh. Who’s that?
Mama.
[shouting]
[both laughing]
Did you know?
Did you know I was coming?
Yeah.
Oh, my love!
Mama!
Mama! Mama! Mama!
[Paul] Are you excited, Alfred?
[Lynsey laughing]
[yelling]
[Paul] You see how quickly he became a superhero.
It’s quite innovative.
Has he been like this since I left or…
[Paul] What you mean?
Well, he’s excited.
[laughing]
No. Oh!
Careful with my eyeballs.
What would Mommy be without my eyeballs?
You’d be nothing.
[laughing] Exactly.
[door opens]
[Paul] Lukas?
[Lukas] Hi, Dad.
[door closes]
[Lynsey gasps]
Hi, Mom.
Hi!
Hi, my love. Hi.
Oh, I missed you so much.
[Alfred] Mama.
Hi.
[Alfred] It’s the best day ever.
I wish always to have you.
[Lynsey] To have me?
[Alfred] Mm.
[Lynsey] Home.
[Alfred] Never to go away.
[Lynsey] I know, but Mommy has to work.
You… You never have to go to work ever again.
Really?
I have to, my love.
It’s your last time.
Ever going to work?
Yeah.
How about one day, and that’s it?
I mean, one day is a little difficult.
But…
Well, how about three days, That’s it. Three. One…
One, two, three. And that’s it.
You go back.
And I come back?
Yeah.
I mean, it depends on where I go.
Some places that I go, it’s like really far away.
So if I go for…
You know, sometimes it takes three days for me to even get where I go, you know?
Does that make sense?
How about you go to the closest place ever?
You mean you want me to work in London?
No.
Hmm, I can’t do that.
You. [Laughing]
[camera clicks]
[Lynsey chuckles]
[switch clicks]
I mean, he needs, like, a Valium is what he needs.
[laughing]
I mean, I don’t know how anyone can deal with him 24/7.
He’s really, like… He’s so energetic.
[Paul] I think he needs, you know, a bit of a change.
He needs to be in a calm environment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
[train rattling]
We did talk in depth about the importance of, you know, covering Ukraine, and I did agree to it and said I thought it was a good idea that she does it. I didn’t think it would be going on for this long, I’m gonna put it that way.
[door opens]
[Lynsey] The main issue that we have to be very careful about is that we just start leading totally separate lives. Paul, II just… I’ve been… That happened before. He shut down, and we went through a really tough time, and we started going to couples therapy and, like, we did a lot of work.
[Phoebe] [on TV] “Phoebe, I love you, “but my work is my life, and that’s what I have to do right now.” And I say, “Your work, your work? How can you say that?” And then you say, um, “It’s tearing me apart.”
That sounds like conversations we’ve had.
[both laugh]
Lukas, what do you have tomorrow after school?
Do you want Black Cat again for the dinner party on Saturday?
[giggling]
Why… What’s going on?
Why are you having a spasm?
How are you so ticklish?
[Paul] Alfred talks, you know, all the time when you’re coming.
Oh. [Kisses] Hi, my little muffin.
He understands time now, and he’s very attached to you, weirdly enough.
Did you turn 10 while I was gone?
[Alfred giggling]
How old are you now?
[gasps]
Not yet.
[Alfred giggles] Are you? Do you tell everyone you’re five?
You’re almost five.
There’s only so much I can control,
you know.
Yeah, I know.
But I’m not planning on doing another, like, four-to six-week rotation.
No, not right now.
Right after we got married, he was like, “Okay, let’s start a family.”
And I was like, “No way.”
She wouldn’t have done it without my kind of pushing.
[Lynsey] I’ve always pictured myself with a family because I grew up with such a loving family.
But, um, like, not today, you know, I was kind of at the height of my career.
I didn’t know any female photographers who had kids. I couldn’t envision how my life would look. Paul was, like, very serious.
You know, we were having this dinner, and he was just like, “You know, I want a family.”
[Paul] I didn’t fully understand how hard it is, particularly in her type of work.
It’s easy for the guy to have a kid, you’re running a bureau, you don’t have to go anywhere, there’s no problem really, right?
And I think I viewed it a bit like that too, at the time.
Hey, come on.
[Lynsey] I said we should be married at least a year.
So I negotiated basically that January 1st, 2011, I would go off the pill.
So I did, but then I never went home. [Laughs]
I went to South Sudan…
[camera shutter clicking] to Iraq. And then the Arab Spring started.
[newscaster] Massive protests over government corruption, political repression.
[newscaster 2] Similar demonstrations have popped up in Yemen and Algeria.
[newscaster 3] It’s now spreading all across the region, particularly to Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi runs one of the most repressive regimes in the entire region.
[Lynsey] I had covered the Middle East and North Africa for years, and I said, I want to go to Libya.
[camera shutter clicking]
[♪ intense music playing]
It was the end of February 2011. I was based in Benghazi and covering this sort of parallel government being set up by the youth in eastern Libya.
[men shouting]
[Lynsey] We kind of pushed forward with the first group of volunteers.
[camera shutter clicking]
Gaddafi’s military had exponentially more weapons, technology, trained fighters.
[airplane droning]
I hear a plane.
[automatic gunfire]
[Lynsey] There was nowhere to hide. The landscape was totally flat and a bomb would just drop next to us.
[explosion booms]
[camera shutter clicking]
Every day. It was terrifying.
[automatic gunfire]
I had been two weeks on the front line. Every single day. Completely pummeled.
I called my editor and said, “I need to get out of here.”
And he said, “Okay.”
And the team at that point was Anthony Shadid, Steve Farrell, Tyler Hicks. Tyler Hicks is, to the rest of the world, one of the most famous, intrepid war photographers. Tyler Hicks, to me, is someone I grew up with. I’ve known him since I was 13 years old. I freelanced, but Tyler is staff, and he’s like the primary New York Times photographer. And the editor told him, “I think you should stay.”
So I was like, “Okay, I’ll stay with Tyler.”
Like, I’m not gonna leave Tyler alone.
[♪ Intense music playing]
For whatever reason that day, I had this horrible premonition.
[gunfire and explosions]
Things were getting really tense on the front line.
[automatic gunfire]
And all these artillery rounds were coming in, literally being bracketed on the position we were at. Muhammad, our driver, started getting calls from his brother. “Gaddafi’s troops are in the city.
You have to get out.”
[shouting in foreign language]
And Gaddafi repeatedly told his military, if you see journalists, they’re spies, and you should just execute them.
[translator] [on TV] They are spreading lies on radios and televisions.
[Lynsey] We’re all journalists who entered illegally. I am freaking out. But I don’t want to say anything because I’m the only woman.
And Mohammed starts screaming, like, “We have to get out of here.”
[man shouting in foreign language]
[automatic gunfire]
[Lynsey] And as we get on the main road, way off in the distance, I see these little figurines of soldiers.
And I said, “You guys, that’s Gaddafi’s troops ahead.”
We get to the checkpoint.
Gaddafi’s troops, like pointing their guns, screaming, “Get out! Stop the car! Stop the car!”
Mohammed stops the car, opens the door, and just, like, throws his arms up and says, “Sahafen.” Journalists.
There are Gaddafi’s troops everywhere.
I was staring down the barrel of the gun and I looked to the right, and I see Tyler, Anthony, and Steve all begging.
[gunshots]
And our young driver, Muhammad, he was executed.
[Paul] I was running the Reuters operation in India, in Delhi.
I got a call from…
I guess in the evening from Tyler’s girlfriend Nikki, saying, have you heard from, uh, from Lynsey or Tyler? And I said no.
[♪ Somber music playing]
[sighs] That was…
I… I was home, but I was on my way to my mother’s, and I checked my voicemail.
The CEO of The New York Times left a message for me to call him.
So I called and he says, um, “Mrs. Addario.
We have, um, sad news.”
So I dropped the phone.
[Phil] I had my receptionist talk to them at The New York Times because I, I just couldn’t talk to them and then come back…
The woman said to me, “Oh, please stop.
It’s okay. Just go home.
I don’t care when you cut my hair.”
I says, “I have to do this.”
My toes, I think on my right foot where I put my pressure, are permanently curled because all I kept doing was digging my foot in the ground.
[Ali Velshi] No word from four New York Times journalists.
Lynsey Addario is among the missing.
I’ll talk to her husband in an exclusive interview. Up next.
[Paul] I appeal to Muammar Gaddafi and his son and the others to find them and to bring them back safely and to bring my Lynsey, you know, back here.
It hadn’t been the first kidnapping.
And quite a few other people had died.
I mean, I was sleepless.
I’m going to say, you know, you got to come back here because, you know, we got to have kids.
You know, that-that’s my, uh…
I’ve been trying to, you know, to get…
[Lisa] The day Paul went on…
[Lesley] I was just gonna…
I totally hadn’t even cried until that point.
He came on and I saw Paul’s face, and I heard him say that, and I just burst into tears.
[Camille] Not knowing whether she was dead, alive, or sexually abused that was probably the worst time of my whole life.
[gunfire and explosions]
[Lynsey] The first three days, they were super violent.
[airplane droning]
[automatic gunfire] We were all blindfolded and bound.
They were really, like, beating the shit out of Tyler, Anthony, and Steve.
There was a guy who was just, like, caressing my face and saying something over and over, and I said, “Anthony, what is he saying?”
And he said, “You’re going to die tonight.”
We drove for hours all along the front line through these very hostile villages loyal to Gaddafi. Every time we would slow down at a checkpoint, crowds would come and try and pull us out of the truck and beat us up.
[automatic gunfire]
There was a soldier next to me, and he was touching me everywhere. My first thought was, I just don’t want to be raped.
Editors at The New York Times say they were last in touch with their journalists on Tuesday Morning.
[Paul] We didn’t know if they were alive or if they were dead.
I’d stay up 24/7 speaking to contacts, to the Turkish President and Prime Minister first to find out if they were alive and then to try to get them out.
They brought us to this room and sat us down on the rug.
They took off our blindfolds and we’re all, like, looking at one another.
And he was like, “Okay, you’re safe now.
We’re not going to beat you anymore.”
And everyone was just, like, crying.
Like basically everyone was just, like, destroyed.
One of the Libyan officials handed me his cell phone, and I was like…
And I put it to my ear, and it was Paul.
[sobs softly]
He basically just said, uh, “You’re getting released,” “and I’ll meet you in Tunisia.”
[newscaster] All four New York Times journalists who were captured and held for six days were released.
[Paul] She was a basket case.
I think we all were.
She cried a lot, and it was very emotional.
You have faced, uh, the fear of losing your life in the line of reporting duty.
You were sexually assaulted?
I was groped. Um, I was groped repeatedly.
How often? Pretty much every time we every time we changed hands to new men.
[Paul] So she’s very open what happened, and, and I think that helped a lot.
We talked about the things that you think, the influence you feel you have by taking these remarkably moving photographs and letting the world know about the perils, particularly of women, but of people who are in danger.
Is it worth it?
It’s a hard question.
I mean, I certainly in the middle of this with my… when I was blindfolded and bound and getting punched in the face, I said, “Why do I do this?
Who cares about Libya?
Why do I care about Libya?”
You know, these are questions I asked myself repeatedly.
I do it because I believe in it.
But is it worth my life?
Is it worth doing this to the people I love?
It’s a difficult question.
It took a while. I think that there are very few people on the planet who can understand how we live our lives, and why we do what we do.
We’re following the latest on a story of two journalists who gave their lives to cover the story.
They were killed yesterday covering the war in Libya.
Chris Hondros and Tim He the ring ton were hit by…
[Lynsey] Tim He the ring ton I was with in the Korangal. And Chris Hondros is someone I’ve known forever.
Tim and Chris’ death sent me over the edge in a way that our own kidnapping didn’t.
I couldn’t understand why we survived and they didn’t. “I was just like,” Fuck this. Enough. Enough death.”
[heartbeat thumping]
I had to pull back and get my bearings, figure out emotionally how much I could cope with and not only me, how much my family could cope with. One day, I got a phone call.
He said, I am a board member at Merck, the pharmaceutical company.
I would like to tell you a story about Mamma Sessay.
He said when that story came out, I put a copy of the story in front of every board member, and they unanimously decided to put $500 million aside to fight maternal death. Doctors Without Borders also had seen the story, and they implemented an ambulance program in Bo Province. In that province alone, they reduced the maternal death rate by 60%.
For me, it was like one of those moments.
[sighs]
I see a lot of women die.
I see a lot of people die.
And somehow, it felt like something came out of it, and maybe it could help people.
[sniffles]
[zipper buzzes]
[Lauren] You never get used to having a sister who’s a war photographer, right?
[Lesley] Mmhmm.
You can’t really overthink it, because then you’ll never be able to function.
Almost like, what’s the point?
You can’t. Right.
[Lynsey] Is that for the meat or the chicken?
Yeah. Cheers!
[all] Cheers!
[Camille] She knows that I worry about her. I asked her, “You’re not going back, are you?”
“Yes. Maybe in August.”
So we… The conversation ended there because what are you going to do?
Tell her you can’t go.
♪ Even though we ain’t got money ♪
Oh, another… Loggins.
♪ I’m so in love ♪
♪ With you, honey ♪
♪ Everything will bring ♪
♪ A chain of love ♪
♪ In the morning when I rise ♪
♪ Bring a tear of joy to my eyes ♪
[laughter]
[Lisa] Are you crying?
The PTSD is kicking in.
[laughter]
This is what happens.
[Lesley] Oh, Lyns!
Lyns.
Every once in a while when you least expect it, she breaks down.
God, we’re singing like Kenny Loggins.
Ah. [Sighs] Well, that put a damper on that one.
I know.
[Lynsey] How was school?
Good.
[Lynsey] Yeah?
[Lukas] Yeah.
[Lynsey] Are we gonna get a call from Mr. Bullard?
[Lukas] No.
[Paul] Pollard.
[Lynsey] Isn’t it Payson Bullard?
Yeah.
[Lynsey] Yeah. See?
I know something.
[Paul] One of the few things about school you know.
[chuckles]
Lukas, stick up for me.
[Paul] At least you now know where, where the school is.
[Lynsey] Oh. [Sighs]
I know where the school is.
I’ve always known where the school is.
I don’t know where their classrooms are, but I know where the school is.
I mean, when Mommy’s at work, you’re kind of watching Netflix.
[Lynsey] Yeah. Thanks, Lukas.
I mean, I’m working hard.
[Paul] She’s on the phone a lot.
[Lynsey] Lukas, how come you don’t pick up when I call?
The only time you wrote me when I was in Ukraine was just to ask me to put money in your account.
And then I ask you how you are.
Do you miss me?
I love you. You don’t answer.
Lukas has said, I don’t want you to go. And do you have to go back to Ukraine. If Lukas, who barely expresses anything, asks that, it’s definitely weighing on him.
[♪ Somber music playing]
[papers rustling]
People think, how can you still go to war as a mother? There is something way bigger than any of us. And I think it sort of takes over. Something that starts as like a try this, you dabble in it, and then it becomes like a mission, and then it becomes your life. And then it becomes a responsibility.
[children chattering excitedly]
[♪ Emotional music playing]
[newscaster] 869 dead in eight years of war.
[newscaster 2] A battleground for more than 20 years.
[newscaster 3] Tens of thousands of refugees have fled the…
[newscaster 4] More than 10,000 people in Yemen have died.
[newscaster 5] Two million others have been displaced. [newscaster 6] Millions near starvation. All victims of a war the world’s ignored.
[Lynsey] People have a tendency to move on. It’s my job to get people to continue paying attention. I have dedicated most of my career to Afghanistan. And there I was back in the country when the Taliban had come back, and again, it had fallen off the radar. All of the things that I had covered.
What’s her name? Salam.
The programs and the funding and the schooling, it was taken away overnight.
[Jake Tapper] Nine days after the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas, Israel ramps up for a ground war in Gaza. The humanitarian crisis continues to get even worse because there’s 1.1 million people…
[Lynsey] I’ve covered war for 20 plus years, and I can’t believe what we’re watching right now.
[Jessica Saltz] Foreign press almost completely blocked from entering Gaza.
[Lynsey] Sometimes I feel really helpless.
[camera shutter clicks]
I just keep shooting and keep moving forward.
[camera shutter clicks]
I have to keep convincing myself that it’s worth it and that it makes a difference because I would not be able to keep doing this work if I didn’t believe in it.
And if I didn’t believe that it was worth the toll that it takes on my loved ones.
[♪ Somber music playing]
[Schwirtz] It’s pretty busted up here.
[Lynsey] Wait.
It is a photo shoot. Look.
Stop! Stop!
[Schwirtz] That’s amazing.
[camera shutter clicks]
♪
[Lynsey laughs]
[Andriy] Watch your step.
[camera shutter clicks]
♪
[man laughs]
♪
♪
