The prolific directors behind Free Solo and The Rescue, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, take on the story of photojournalist Lynsey Addario, one of the few women covering war zones and global conflicts. Produced by National Geographic, the film can be neatly divided into two sections: Lynsey’s field work and her personal and family life, which is inevitably affected by the long stretches she spends in distant, dangerous places. The professional side of the film is often riveting, showing Addario in extremely harsh and complex situations across Ukraine, the Middle East, and North Africa. The family material, by contrast, feels far more conventional, the kind of footage Addario herself tends to criticize when asked about it in interviews.
One of the key questions in Love+War is how Lynsey manages to do what she does while being the mother of two small children. And that, though the film depicts it at length, is precisely the kind of question she hates being asked, since such scrutiny would never be directed at a male war photographer. By choosing to emphasize that aspect, the filmmakers end up betraying their subject—or perhaps Addario betrays herself, given her active participation in the project and her willingness to film her family life. If there’s truly no conflict between being a woman and being a war photographer, then much of what the documentary shows feels unnecessary, or at least should have been a secondary focus.
Outside the domestic realm—the “War” half of the title—the film gains real strength. It vividly reconstructs the context behind some of Addario’s most iconic images, conveying the danger, adrenaline, and emotional weight of her experiences, as well as the social and journalistic impact her photographs have had. Beyond the war fronts of Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and South Sudan, Addario has documented injustices and violence against women in many of those regions—work that has resonated deeply because of the human suffering it portrays.
The film zeroes in on specific moments from her career: the haunting photo of a family killed in Ukraine, her coverage of a female soldier there, her kidnapping alongside other American journalists, among others. Some are told through interviews; others through footage shot in real time. In those sequences, she’s entirely in her element. Despite the emotional toll her work inevitably takes—regardless of gender—it’s clear that this is her passion, and she seems determined to keep risking her life to document difficult truths in dangerous places.
In those moments, Love+War becomes a far greater film—one that captures not just the danger and adrenaline of Addario’s work, but also her reflections on its meaning and purpose. Beyond that, while her scenes with her children or stories told by her sisters are tender, they don’t add much depth. What remains is the portrait of an admirable, tireless woman trying to balance her family and her calling—like so many others do, just under far more perilous circumstances.
