War Photographer

Christian Frei's long-harboured study of free-ranging war photographer James Nachtwey opens with a lengthy over-the-camera POV shot showing the man snapping the embers of a Kosovan home: a cumbersome device that resurfaces intermittently in what is otherwise a film of low key, stately intimacy. An inexpressive, single-minded fellow, Nachtwey has photographed everywhere from Rwanda and Ramallah to the junk heaps of Jakarta since first fixing on his calling during the Vietnam War. Besides the urgencies of conflict coverage, he's long been documenting poverty and famine around the world. There's some footage of him composing and editing his work, but the film is most telling when he speaks on the realism and idealism, the conviction and iconoclasm of his work.