Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud

On March 13, 2022, filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed by Russian soldiers – the first American journalist to die while reporting on the war in Ukraine. His younger brother and collaborator, Craig Renaud, recovered Brent’s body and his final recordings from Ukraine and brought them back to their childhood home in Arkansas. As Brent’s journey to his final resting place unfolds, the film chronicles the years he and his brother spent covering some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.

The vérité film includes harrowing footage of the brothers’ reporting from around the globe, including time embedded with the Arkansas National Guard in Iraq, the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the war in Somalia, immigrants’ journeying from Honduras to the United States, and Brent’s reportage upon arriving in Ukraine. Despite bearing witness to devastating loss and suffering, Brent fearlessly covered stories from the front lines, while empathically capturing the impact on innocent people. Unflinching in its depiction of death, loss, and the toll of war, the film is Brent’s ultimate testament to the critical value of wartime reporting and a tribute to journalists providing on-the-ground, life-threatening coverage of world events. As journalism becomes one of the most dangerous professions in the world, ARMED ONLY WITH A CAMERA: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BRENT RENAUD is dedicated to Brent and all the devoted journalists who use their cameras to work for truth and understanding.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Juan Arredondo, Producer and Filmmaker, and Lucy Westcott, Chief Emergencies Officer, Committee to Protect Journalists, moderated by Azmat Khan, Director, Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism.

This event is co-sponsored by the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia University and the Overseas Press Club.

November 13, 2025, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Columbia Journalism School
Pulitzer Hall, Lecture Hall, 3rd Floor
2950 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

Registration required.

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Juan Arredondo is a Colombian-American filmmaker and photographer known for documenting human rights and social conflicts in Latin America and Ukraine. He frequently contributes to The New York Times and National Geographic. Juan has received the World Press Photo Award, POYi and Peabody Awards for his photography and documentary filmmaking work. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and holds a degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He teaches photojournalism and documentary filmmaking at Rutgers University.

Lucy Westcott became director of CPJ’s Emergencies Department in October 2021. She oversees CPJ’s assistance and safety work worldwide. Westcott joined CPJ in 2018 as the James W. Foley Fellow. During her fellowship, she focused on safety issues for women journalists in non-hostile environments and assisted with the creation of safety resources for journalists globally. In 2021, she played a prominent role in CPJ’s response to the Afghan crisis, including helping Afghan journalists and their families evacuated to Qatar. Prior to joining CPJ, Westcott was a staff writer for Newsweek, where she covered gender and immigration. She has reported for outlets including The Intercept, Bustle, The Atlantic, and Women Under Siege, and was a United Nations correspondent for the Inter Press Service. As a fellow with the International Reporting Project in 2016, Westcott wrote about gender and development in South Africa and Lesotho. She has reported from Egypt, Jordan, Cameroon, and the U.S. She has a master’s in multi-platform journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

Azmat Khan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who reports on war and the Patti Cadby Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she also leads the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism.

Columbia University makes every effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend this event, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. Requests for CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) or sign language interpretation require two weeks’ notice.