From a safe, warm place, journalist Michael Fox asks four independent filmmakers to reflect on the lengths that they’ll go to get the story.

The struggles of documentary filmmakers run the gamut from scuffling for funding and wrangling for access to scrambling for footage. The personal and financial sacrifices they make are significant, yet many are impelled to go even further and risk the most precious thing of all—their lives.

Laura Poitras spent months in Baghdad on her own, documenting the election campaign of a doctor-turned-politician for her Academy Award-nominated film, MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY. Margarita Martinez and Scott Dalton (LA SIERRA) followed three young men living la vida violenta in a Colombian barrio. Filming without official permission, Micha Peled illuminated the lives of teenage workers in a Chinese jeans factory in CHINA BLUE. Cal Skaggs ventured into the West Bank with Israeli journalists for part of DEMOCRACY ON DEADLINE and accompanied a U.S. reserve unit to Pakistan and Afghanistan to shoot his current work-in-progress.

These filmmakers were hardly oblivious to the dangers they would likely encounter, but the urgency of the situation and an extraordinary sense of responsibility took precedence. “I [am] a reporter because I have a passion for going to places and telling stories, hopefully important stories,” says Colombian journalist Margarita Martinez, who has worked for the Associated Press for eight years. “Colombia is a dangerous place, so [making a film] wasn't much more dangerous than being a reporter. I had worked for years building those contacts, and I had an access that no one had and the ability to stay in a place like that for months.”

New York filmmaker Cal Skaggs didn’t shoot in his own backyard but zoomed from Russia to Nigeria to Sierra Leone to Israel to report on the travails of journalists working in hot zones. Asked why he placed himself in jeopardy so far from home, he cited the same impetus as Martinez. “Simple,” he says with a brusque chuckle. “To get the story. Filmmakers will do almost anything to get the story.” But there’s more to it than just nabbing images, he adds. He may not have Martinez’s advantage of knowing a place inside and out, but he feels a similar urge to “empathize or share with the people’s lives you’re using in your documentary.”

Laura Poitras does not have a journalist’s orientation, and she did not go to Iraq to render current events. “Future generations are going to want to look back on these pivotal years, post 9/11,” she asserts. “We’re living in times [where] we don’t quite understand their implications. I didn’t go there with a sense of responsibility or political activism, but with a real belief in the importance of documenting these times. And I didn’t go there to make a point but to express something, like an artist.”

Good intentions are one thing, and prudence is another. Surprisingly, the amount of risk analysis and strategizing some of the filmmakers did before they embarked on their projects was minimal. “I am embarrassed to tell you, but we didn't discuss any of that, we just started and went along,” Martinez confides. Micha Peled, with four documentaries under his belt prior to CHINA BLUE, is of like mind. “The reflective part of my work goes into the content and how to get it,” the San Francisco-based filmmaker says. “Sadly, it does not go into issues of personal safety, safety of equipment, all those kinds of things. I don’t think that a lot of life insurance companies would want to issue a policy for this kind of lifestyle.” Laughing, he continues, “If there was some thinking about physical risk in advance, I would never leave home. So that’s not the direction I want to speculate about ahead of time. There is very little that I can do about it, anyway.”

Laura Poitras, whose MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY evinced a breathtakingly fearless commitment, nonetheless avers. “That’s when you have to come to terms with that kind of risk, before you start,” she muses. “I always believed in the importance of making the film, before I went. I was compelled. Knowing I might get killed—I had to be aware of the risk. You can’t get on the plane without doing some processing around that fact.” Read more