One life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as the millions that may go down in a pogrom. Let’s forget about number and talk about life. The above was the musings of Dele Giwa, Newswatch’s founding editor-in-chief, in an article over three decades ago.
That might be true, but the film world is particularly aghast right now over the killing in Ukraine of the filmmaker Brent Renaud.
A celebrated filmmaker, Brent Renaud had snapped attention by traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the world to documentaries that brought the orbits o suffering and privation to people right in their homes.
Recalling the incident du
Brent was shot in the neck and did not survive his injuries. Juan himself was shot in the back but survived to tell the tale. Both journalists were heading to film refugees leaving.
The report of Brent Renaud’s killing by Russian forces has provoked tears and outrage in equal measure, with some calling for more stringent sanctions on Russia, which had invaded Ukraine and provoked the current war in Eastern Europe.