LAWLESS AND DISORDER
“Never Look Away” is a film helmed by a first-time director chronicling an obscure (and now dead 15 years) CNN camerawoman.
Doesn’t sound promising.
And yet, it’s a full-length documentary which is already garnering a whole lot of attention and some Oscar buzz.
Part of that attention is due to the identity of the first-time director, Lucy Lawless.
Many know Ms. Lawless for her acting. She played the iconic Xena: Warrior Princess during its six-year run from 1995-2001.
Overall, her IMDb profile boasts 83 credits.
But Ms. Lawless, who splits her time between Los Angeles and her farm in New Zealand, proves herself a restrained, talented and intuitive director in this tale about CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth.
The film is the spotlight feature kicking off the 10th annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (MLFF) this coming Wednesday, May 22 at 7 p.m.
The screening at MLFF marks the film’s west coast premiere.
The Sheet scored a rare interview with Ms. Lawless on Monday before she jets off to Europe to screen her film at the Sundance Film Festival: London.
The interview came a day after Lawless posted on Twitter about the two-year anniversary of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s death in Israel.
“#MargaretMoth would be there today if she could,” posted Lawless. “The story must be told.”
Abu Akleh was an American journalist who was shot and killed while reporting in the West Bank.
According to the Al Jazeera reporting on the incident, “She had been dressed in a blue vest marked ‘press’ when she was killed covering an Israeli raid in Jenin.”
As Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. observed, “If you can kill an American citizen who was among the highest profile journalists in the Arab world, on camera, and get away with it, that sends a very clear message about what’s permissible.”
In the 214 days since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, the Al Jazeera story claims Israel has killed 142 journalists in Gaza.
What does this all have to do with Margaret Moth?
As Lawless’s film documents, for the longest time, journalists in war zones were treated like the Red Cross. Neutral actors. Non-partisan. Simply reporting the events on the ground.
And then, journalists suddenly became targets.
As they say, shoot the messenger.
Moth was one such target. And what happens to her, and how she responds to what happens to her, is what elevates this film from a garden variety amusement to something extraordinary.
Her injuries suffered on the job are not run-of-the-mill.
Her response is also not run-of-the-mill.
But would you expect anything less from a person for whom “Don’t be Boring” was one of the ten commandments.
Lawless said she was first approached by Moth’s good friend Joe Duran about a potential documentary.
“I’d forgotten all about her,” admits Lawless, who describes Moth as “the least known famous person in New Zealand.”
But Lawless soon became obsessed by this rebel who smoked cigars with Gen. Schwartzkopf during Operation Desert Storm and who most resembled Joan Jett’s big sister. A rebel who would sleep in her combat boots. A rebel who infamously bitch-slapped an Iraqi policeman who had the nerve to shove her camera.
This was in Saddam’s Iraq.
In fact, said Lawless, the event described above was cited as one of the principal reasons as to why CNN got kicked out of Iraq.
One of the central mysteries of the film is who Margaret Moth is at her core, and Lawless is deft at presenting the different sides of Moth without judgment.
Lawless even admits, “I don’t know if she’d like me.”
And there are points – like when Moth at 30 takes up with/infatuates a 17-year old boyfriend – where we’re not sure we like her either.
Moth’s past is enigmatic. She’s left New Zealand (the film starts during her time in Houston after she’s emigrated) but we don’t quite know why.
And her professional career is also enigmatic. It took quite a bit of sleuthing for Lawless to pin down where she’d been and what she’d shot. Camera work in those days was unaccredited, and a lot of tape that Moth shot was recorded over. A lot of how Lawless pieced together what Moth shot was based upon travel itineraries.
And, of course, there are priceless scenes where you can’t see Moth, but you can hear her as she exclaims, camera rolling, not missing a beat, “They just shot me in the fucking foot!”
The film has been bought by Greenwich Entertainment and will enjoy a limited cinematic release.
As for Lawless, she is now hooked on directing and has three scripted projects in the works. “I want to work with actors,” she says. “And I want to luminate the human spirit so we can go talk about it.”
You won’t be at a loss for conversation following a screening of “Never Look Away.”
