BAFTA-nominated documentary director and cinematographer Laura Warner remembers watching The Killing Fields, Roland Joffé’s Oscar-winning 1984 documentary about the Cambodian Civil War, when she was 16. “That’s where my obsession with photojournalism started,” she says.
Understanding, innately, how pictures could help to uncover the human stories shattered by global conflict, Warner wasn’t immediately drawn to journalistic war correspondence. “I went to art school and got taken to go and see an exhibition of Lee Miller’s photos,” she recalls.
“I was blown away, obviously, not just by the power of her photos and how photography could be used so forcefully, but also by the fact that you had this amazing kick-ass woman who went off to a war zone by herself and came back with what I think are some of the most powerful images of the Second World War.”
She wanted to be Lee Miller. So, art school led Warner to an impressive documentary career, shooting in over 100 countries, including capturing footage of the Iraq War and the Libyan Civil War. Her latest film, The Cranes Call, supported by producers including Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, throws her headlong into Ukraine under assault by Putin’s invading Russian forces.
“People talk about the female gaze, and not to be all gendered about it, but that was so important to me with this film,” Warner says. “Many of the survivors we spoke to were women, and their experience is very different. So, I wanted to shoot The Cranes Call with that in mind.”
To that end, Warner used vintage camera lenses and filters. “They were a nightmare in the middle of a war zone because they were literally falling to pieces in my hands. But they give it this really beautiful, soft look. The audience connects differently with what they’re seeing.”
The inside of a destroyed building in 'The Cranes Call'. Credit: Molinare
What matters most
The Cranes Call is centred on indomitable women. Anya Neistat is a war crimes investigator and legal director of The Docket, an arm of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, led by Amal and George Clooney.
“Anya has been chasing Putin’s generals who have been committing these crimes for over 25 years,” Warner says. “The same generals who have committed the same crimes in Chechnya, Georgia and in Syria, who have been allowed to literally get away with murder and crime against humanity that perpetuate. It’s astounding.”
Anya Neistat during filming for 'The Cranes Call'. Credit: Evan Williams
Neistat was born and raised in Moscow by her equally impressive mother, who grew up under Stalin and championed human rights in the face of great danger at home, before finally being convinced to flee by her daughter. They now live in Paris, where scenes of blissful family dinners are in stark contrast to the devastation in Ukraine.
“They are extraordinary forces of nature, and this is coming from somebody who has tried to direct them both,” Warner chuckles. “It took Anya quite an effort to persuade her mother to leave Russia, and, ultimately, she had to leave in a real hurry, with one suitcase of clothes. But the one thing that she took with her were the family records.”
Including a cache of their family photographs. “I have this thing that I say to my producer [Australian Evan Williams] and the people we film with,” Warner says. “For me, it doesn’t exist unless it’s gone in the camera.
“Of course, we can argue philosophically about that, and conversations exist. We can remember them. But how do you document them? And I think that’s the difference, isn’t it? Whether it’s through a photo or a film, it becomes something tangible.”
Laura Warner at the premiere of 'The Cranes Call' during the 2024 Tribeca Festival in New York. Credit: John Lamparski / Getty Images
That’s why Warner is so drawn to documenting conflict zones, exposing the crimes of those like the Russian army who would perpetrate horrific war crimes engineered to eradicate people and places, culture and memory. It’s what drove Miller. Documenting what was lost so that they could never be forgotten.
“I’ve gone pretty analogue with the way that I film in The Cranes Call,” Warner says. “I have a big, hulking camera and these vintage lenses that are, like, 50 years old because I want people to be able to viscerally feel that this is real.”
Shooting the film was very real for Neistat’s wing-woman, Solomiia Stasiv, a Ukrainian who joined The Docket on account of what’s happening to her country, and whose mother was also a war crimes investigator.
“This whole conflict about whether Ukraine is an independent country has been raging for decades,” Warner says. “It took us two years to make this film, and, in that time, the news cycle moves on. Everybody’s like, ‘Ukraine is yesterday’s war’. It’s not. It’s today’s war and tomorrow’s. It’s just that we’ve added a few more on top of that.”
The bombs are real, and when they drop, you don’t know whether you’re going to be underneath them.
Stasiv is surrounded by the devastation of her country as Warner records her reactions in real time. “The bombs are real, and when they drop, you don’t know whether you’re going to be underneath them,” she says. “Our wonderful fixer in Kharkiv, the balcony was blown off his apartment and now he has a hole in the wall. It may not be in the news, but it’s happening. It happened last night and the night before. It’ll happen tonight, in Gaza and in Ukraine.”
Shining a light
The Cranes Call is full of conversations with brave women and men who have been subjected to terrible war crimes. To sexual assault, torture and degradation. To the murder of their families and the destruction of their homes and belongings.
Their testimonies are harrowing, but also hopeful.
“All of the hope comes from them sharing their story as witnesses,” Warner says. “The amount of bravery it takes to stand up against Putin’s war machine and his generals is really quite astounding. To say, ‘I will take part in this lawsuit’.
“These are people that have been cut down to almost nothing,” Warner says. “The enemy tried to dehumanise them, but they’ve risen up to become one of the biggest symbols of humanity you could possibly ask for, and there is so much hope in that. It is a shining light.”
The Cranes Call is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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The Cranes Call
