Hot Docs 2024 Review | Never Look Away

With her directorial debut, Never Look Away, Lucy Lawless profiles the career and struggles of former CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth to dazzling, heart-stopping effect.

The hard living and hard loving Moth – who looked more like an imposing punk rocker than a foreign correspondent – was a relentlessly driven professional who excelled at capturing footage in war zones. Always as close to the action and danger as possible, Moth quickly became a celebrated journalist for her work in places like Baghdad, Kuwait, Bosnia, and Tbilisi throughout the 1990s, and established herself as indispensable member of the CNN news team. Not even a sniper’s bullet to her jaw was able to stop her career for very long, with Moth doing everything in her power to get back to the point she was at before her life nearly ended.

Never Look Away thoughtfully looks at Moth’s often conflicted and brusque personality in tandem with her ability to capture indelible images of war that remain iconic today. Moth’s personal life was messy, but it was her own, and she never made any concessions for her free-spirited vanity and professional focus. As a camerawoman, she was able not only able to offer stark visions of wartime violence, but also tributes to the resilience of those living through such a nightmare.

Lawless treats Moth as not only a legend of the journalistic trade, but as a complex human being with a rich inner life that informed her work. Never Look Away is an enriching biopic, and quite honestly, a better and more nuanced examination of the mentality it takes to be a war correspondent than Alex Garland’s recently released Civil War. Never Look Away offers more of an adrenaline rush than most documentaries and a well honed profile of an iconic figure at the same time.

Saturday, April 27, 2024 – 5:15 pm – TIFF Lightbox 2

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 – 6:30 pm – Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema

Saturday, May 4, 2024 – 8:15 pm – Scotiabank 5