lessons in life, war and art from Lee director Ellen Kuras, actress Kate Winslet and their leading men • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

“Strange that two photography-based war films would come out in the same year,” Jen notes, but it’s more uncanny than strange; movies made years and countries apart often arrive in the same cinematic time and space, speaking collectively to a moment. There’s another: Never Look Away, a documentary by Xena: Warrior Princess actress Lucy Lawless, tells of the punky New Zealand camerawoman Margaret Moth, who covered many battles for CNN and took a bullet to the jaw in Sarajevo.

Alongside these films, the world watches in real time as visual journalists like Bisan Owda, Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Julia Kochetova document on social media the impact of war in Gaza, in Ukraine, with delicate attention to human detail. (Kochetova even replicated Miller’s famous bathtub photograph.)

A year on from Lee’s world premiere, Kuras reflects, “This story as we’ve told it is also very resonant for what’s happening today. I think people are really going to connect with the people in the film who are on the cusp of World War Two, and the feelings that they have of not knowing and not seeing what was around the corner.”

Indeed, what’s most notable in the two collaborations between Kuras and Winslet, released twenty years apart, is how the first (Eternal Sunshine) is desperate to erase happy memories, while the second (Lee) demands that we never, ever forget the horrific truth. May we also never forget those brave witnesses like Miller and Scherman, who help us see in order to help us to believe.