Word'sWorth

SHOOTING UNDER FIRE – is the story where Reinhard Krause, the German head of the Reuters Israeli photo bureau is up against a deadline and facing a moral dilemma. He's looking at a photo that shows the head of the female suicide bomber still perfectly in tact lying on the ground, severed cleanly from her body without a blemish on her face and with no blood to be seen. Does he decide to show this to the world or keep it hidden? "Every picture must tell a story" Reinhard says and it's clear what happened with this frame, but is the world ready for this kind of image? He needs to decide within minutes. Welcome to the everyday difficulties of depicting a story that keeps rolling on with new horrors. This film joins Reinhard during the last few weeks of his 4 year placement in Israel and unveils the people and the pressured process of a news agency producing the photos we see in papers around the world. Reinhard single-handedly revolutionized how photos are taken and reported upon in Israel and is now working with a well-oiled team made up of both Palestinians and Israelis, many of whom still have never met, as freedom of movement is restricted for everyone. Both sides of the war report to the same person. Reinhard's team reports on atrocities most days and each of them has found different ways to cope with the stress of what they are witnessing. Gil, an Israeli photographer breaks down on camera after covering an emotional funeral saying that sometimes he feels like an animal chasing after the shots. Ahmed, a Palestinian who was nearly killed when on the job knows that it's his duty to show the world what is really going on in Gaza and lives and breathes his job. Nir, a young talented photographer in Tel Aviv has learnt to separate the day job and his leisure time and blocks off what he doesn't want to think about. Abed, a resident in the anarchic West Bank town of Nablus has become a spokesman for local journalists even though he's had to endure 90 days of curfew before. All of them won't change their job for love nor money. This film gets behind the world's oldest news agency to show how the news is made and reported on, from the first ambulance text of an accident in Jerusalem to the front page of the papers the next morning. Few of us stop to think how our stories and pictures come to us. With unprecedented access Shooting under Fire shows us the full process, highlighting the staggeringly fast digital technology, the difficult morals that await even the toughest of snappers, and the extreme lives that people lead in a land in war.