I liked what director Boris Lojkine did with actress Nina Meurisse in Soleymane's Story (2024) and wondered about this prior art. He wrote the script with Bojina Panayotova.
This is a biopic of French photojournalist Camille Lepage. For reasons unexplored here she went to the Central African Republic to cover the (ongoing) civil war from about 2012 to about 2014. Her addiction proves predictably fatal, and her interest in accompanying the violent young men is sometimes hard to fathom as she always seems to be surprised and disgusted by the killing, dismemberment etc. Perhaps her need to record their stories dominated. The narrative arc can't go anywhere novel — the opening scenes imply she does not survive, and if she hadn't succeeded in getting published in the mainstream media nobody would have known about her. We're told she had no interest in taking assignments in other unsettled regions (specifically Ukraine).
There is some good cinematography, and of course some striking stills. At some point the French media contingent pile into a 78-series troopy. Often the crowds (large and small) burst into song as in Io Capitano (2023).
