Sundance 2024 Review: Never Look Away – “Margaret Moth was an amazing, enigmatic woman.”

Margaret Moth appears in Never Look Away by Lucy Lawless, an official selection of the World Documentary Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Margaret Moth was an amazing, enigmatic woman.  Spending the vast majority of her time in the male-dominated world of combat journalism, she was a camerawoman in the thick of it all.  She was fearless and, so it appears, an adrenalin junkie who was unapologetic in the way that she lived.  When sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll didn’t satisfy, she traded it for the danger of the front lines.  Stepping behind the camera for the first time, Lucy Lawless (Xena, Battlestar Galactica) reveals the life of this remarkable, unstoppable spirit in documentary Never Look Away.

Lawless didn’t pick an easy subject for her first film.  Moth, now deceased after she passed from cancer in 2010, was a very mysterious woman who hid her past from those who knew her best.  Her siblings offer some insight into the trauma of her childhood, but it’s clear that things seemed even worse for Moth based on the macabre drawings she made.  Even those closest to her knew that the kinetic, tireless persona of Margaret Moth was a character, that underneath Margaret Wilson (her birth name) was hiding from view.

We don’t ever really get to see all of that person, and it makes it hard to understand her insatiable drive for danger.  I’m not sure we’d be able to even if she was around to explain it.  How does a young, blond haired, blue-eyed girl from New Zealand become the woman described as “Joan Jett’s big sister,” whose camera became an extension of self?  This is still pretty well a mystery even as Lawless interviews old boyfriends (and there were many, all younger), fellow camera people (you can’t call it cameraman after watching this film) and CNN colleagues (including chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour and former correspondent Stefano Kotsonis).

While they aren’t all able to truly dig deep into what made Moth tick, all of them speak with a sense of wonder and admiration about her.  Even after a sniper in Sarajevo took away her lower jaw in a horrific attack, Moth, who wasn’t even expected to survive her injuries, rallied to come back.  This was a woman who always got looks for her beauty and enigmatic presence who now was instead stared at for her scars.  Undergoing 23 surgeries in her lifetime, Moth didn’t stop.  She couldn’t stop while there were still atrocities of war to uncover.

Lawless uses some graphical work, but a lot of Moth’s own professional footage is in the film, not an easy feat considering it was shot on Betamax and not likely digitized.  These times when we see what Moth saw behind the camera is when the documentary is at its best.  Clearly a labor of love, Never Look Away wants to give credit to Moth’s fearless dedication to depicting the truth.  She was, herself, a rebel, but a benign rule breaker.  She was a person who went against social norms.  But she wanted to be where people were breaking the rules and causing true harm.  She wanted to expose them and hold them accountable.  She felt it was her duty.  We get all of that portrayed in this documentary, but we lose, perhaps because it’s not fully available to the filmmakers, the woman in her own words (though we see just a few clips of interviews with her after her injuries).

It seems strangely eerie that some of Moth’s last depicted work takes place in Israel and Lebanon given the current war in Gaza.  And when journalists are also currently being laid off in droves, Never Look Away now feels like such a timely film.  Lawless may not have intended it to be so topical, but I feel she did want it to remind us of the importance of this type of work.  Images such as the ones Moth collected remind the world of what is happening, sometimes even being the catalyst for change.  It keeps historical record, it incites political pressure and it assures that humanity is held responsible for its actions.  Moth may not have been all about family, but in the end she was about people and their suffering, and she wanted to make sure that globally we could never look away.  For this, may her legacy always live on.

Never Look Away premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 18, 2024.  It is still available for viewing in the U.S online until January 28th.  For more information head to festival.sundance.org