Under Fire: Journalists in Combat

A JUF Pictures production in colaboration with Documentary, with the help of the Canadian Media Fund, using the participation of Rogers Documentary Fund, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and Ontario Media Development Corp. Created by Martyn Burke, Anthony Feinstein. Executive producers, Laura Morton, Bruce Cowley. Directed, compiled by Martyn Burke.With: Finbarr O'Reilly, Jon Steele, Susan Ormiston, Ian Stewart, Chris Hedges, Christina Lamb, Anthony Loyd, Jeremy Bowen, Paul Watson.A sobering number of conversations with reporters and photography enthusiasts who've found themselves caught in physical and moral war zones, "Under Fire" reckons using its subject in straightforward but engrossingly tough-minded fashion. One emerges from author-director Martyn Burke's docu hard-pressed to think about an occupation having a more distinctively harrowing group of work hazards, including publish-distressing stress disorder, the addictive thrill of existence-or-dying situations, and also the essential callousness needed to document the disasters of war. Carrying out a limited run, the docu should settle easily into smallscreen showings. Audiences unconvinced through the "war is really a drug" doctrine established by Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" will discover it nicely corroborated through the self-accepted adrenaline lovers here, whose collective war-confirming experience spans a fantastic quantity of overseas conflicts from Sarajevo and Chechnya to El Salvador and Libya (Tim Heatherington is among the lately slain journos memorialized). Probably the most affecting, self-lacerating interview comes thanks to former La Occasions correspondent Paul Watson, regretfully remembering his legendary photo of Staff Sgt. William Cleveland's body being pulled with the roads of Mogadishu. Polished speaking-heads approach is interspersed with firsthand combat clips and excessive intertitles.Camera (color), Jesse Purser editor, Christopher McEnroe music, Mark Korven. Examined on DVD, Pasadena, Calif., November. 11, 2011. Running time: 90 MIN. Contact Justin Chang at justin.chang@variety.com