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Friends and colleagues of filmmaker and journalistBrent Renaud, whom officials say was killed in a Russian attack on March 13 while covering thewar in Ukraine, tell PEOPLE he was a gifted, fearless and sensitive reporter who traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places to find meaningful, untold stories and document the resilience of his subjects.
“He dedicated his life to revealing — in what many of us would characterize as the worst of places or things — the beauty and strength in the human spirit that is always there,” Stephen Bailey says of Renaud. “He was always able to see that in every story he told. He made that apparent and showed that that was true.”
Bailey, adocumentary producer and director of photographywho worked and traveled with Renaud, who was 50, says the latter had an “uncanny ability” for “blending in” to gain access to locations that would otherwise be off-limits.
He also described Renaud’s talent for getting apprehensive people who might have been through harrowing ordeals to let down their guard and speak to the world through his lens.
“We would be in really scary situations and Brent would always be able to remain so present with whoever we were with and give them his undivided attention and put his own thoughts and feelings aside to hear their story,” says Bailey, 33. “He had that presence that really opened the door for people to share their truths.”
Throughout the filmmaking process, Bailey says, Renaud’s integrity was steadfast.
“I never saw him compromise despite this industry, despite what the execs want or what the pressures are,” Bailey says, adding, “There’s always the push to make things more sensational. He never compromised on his values for seeking and telling the truth the way it is and letting people speak for themselves and what that truth is.”
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Renaud was “just so good, and so brave, and so committed to the truth, and so committed to shining a light on people who otherwise don’t get the attention,” says another friend, Christof Putzel, anindependent journalist and filmmaker.
“His gift was he listens to people in a way that made people want to pour their hearts out,” Putzel, 42, continues. “People that wouldn’t talk to anybody else would talk to Brent and tell Brent the most intimate parts and difficult aspects of their life.”
This, according to Putzel, made Renaud “without question the best documentary filmmaker of our era, the best war journalist of our era, the most empathetic and courageous, ballsy individual you could ever hope to meet.”
Putzel says he last spoke with his friend the day before Renaud left for Ukraine, where Renaud was working on a project about the global refugee crisis for TIME Studios,the news outlet said, and that they exchanged text messages days before his death to check in.
“I said to be safe,” Putzel remembers. “I’ve always had full confidence in Brent, knowing that whatever he was doing was going to be incredible.”
Renaud, who frequently worked with his brother, Craig, was well-known for his video projects highlighting “humanistic vérité stories” in some of the world’s most conflict-affected areas,according to the brothers' website.
The veteran reporters won a Peabody Award for their Vice News documentary about Chicago schools in 2014. Before that, in 2010, they helped found the Little Rock Film Festival in their home state of Arkansas.
“He was one of the most hardworking and devoted people I’ve ever met,” Jack Lofton, the festival’s former executive director and an Arkansas native, tells PEOPLE. “He was fearless, and nowadays the truth is getting more and more dangerous.”
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The death of such a talented reporter is a “loss to the entire world,” according to Lofton, who co-founded theindependent film company Mudroom.
“He was willing to take risks that others may not — to try to show what’s actually happening in this world,” Lofton, 40, says of his friend, adding that Renaud “shined light in those dark places and, because of it, he’s made the world a better place.”
Jeff Newton, a now-freelance producer who’s worked at National Geographic and Vice on HBO, says he met Renaud at60 Minutes.
“We worked in some really hot spots together,” Newton, 54, tells PEOPLE — including covering stories in Egypt, Iraq and Somalia.
“Aside from that, we hung out,” Newton adds. “We were very close friends, and he feels like a brother to me.”
Newton says when he and Renaud spoke shortly before Renaud left for Ukraine, Renaud was in “good spirits” but “anxious to shoot the next phase of his project” on migrants for TIME Studios.
He describes their last phone call as a “typical conversation we had when one of us went to a bad place: ‘Be safe, stay low, move fast,’ all that kind of thing,” he says. “You never really think that your smart, capable friends are not going to come home, but it’s a high-risk game. And when you have a conventional army, whose president seems fit on killing civilians and journalists, the risk is even higher.”
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Newton says Renaud understood those risks, thanks to journalistic instincts honed over years of covering international conflicts.
“He was fearless and not easily intimidated when it came to tracking those stories,” Newton says, adding that war correspondents must balance their own security with their pursuit of a story, all while keeping emotions in check.
“You always are talking about the risk and how to mitigate your risk and also assessing what your risk is still going to be after your mitigation,” Newton says. “Emotionally, it’s not just something you talk about. You just wouldn’t talk about, ‘I’m scared,’ or you would just say, ‘This is not smart, we’re not going to do this.’ You don’t get into the deeper thoughts of how it affects you.”
While risk assessment and careful calculations about security are part of the job, Newton says, “You can’t account for every sniper rifle in a window and you can’t account for mortars coming from miles away that you don’t hear until it’s too late.”
Now, with many journalists sharing their heartbreak over Renaud’s death and Ukraine’s PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyyexpressing his own"heartfelt condolences"to Renaud’s family, Newton says his friend would “hate the fact that people are fawning over him.”
“I’m certain he would say, ‘Please turn the lens back on these people in Ukraine. Please continue to tell the stories of thousands of people who nobody seems to care about until it’s too late,’ " Newton says, “because that’s all he was ever trying to do.”
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Mike Poe, another filmmaker from Little Rock who worked with Renaud and his brother for years on the festival as an events producer and coordinator, tells PEOPLE the late journalist “knew the risks he was taking” in his pursuit of compelling stories that tell the truth at the heart of his subject matter.
“He would not want his death used in vain,” says Poe, 49. “He would not want the governments to use it for more war. He would not want the media to use it to, I guess, drum up the war as well.”
Poe says Renaud was “very thoughtful” and an “authentic documentarian” who inspired him to keep working despite feeling “completely numb” after his adopted brother and best friend, musician T.C. Edwards, wasfatally shot in 2014.
According to Poe, Renaud told him, “I know it’s going to be hard, but you have to keep filming.”
“It made a huge impact on me and it really stuck with me,” Poe says now. “It gave me license and to see that I had this mission.”
In the wake of another shocking death, which Poe called a “war crime” and a “murder,” Renaud’s friend says he would share a similar message to other filmmakers and journalists.
“I absolutely know,” Poe says, “that he would want anyone that is doing what he does to pick up their camera and get to work.”
source: people.com
