Robert Fisk has been called contrarian and controversial. If it’s contrarian to ask the question, “What is it about us that permits this to happen?” while reporting on blown-out Homs, Syria (or police violence in Belfast, or a Palestinian camp in Lebanon), then the Beirut-based foreign correspondent for The Independent is indeed controversial. In Yung Chang’s documentary portrait, Fisk is philosophical, articulate even in his off-the-cuff musings, and not about to let anyone define him. Questions about the nature and purpose of journalism that Fisk has spent decades asking should be top of mind today, making Chang’s film important as well as informative. It takes us to many one-time hot-spots, many still smoldering. But if watching a reporter narrowly dodge bullets or cannily cajole a reluctant source is entertaining from a distance, Fisk wants you to know that all this—the violence, the suffering—is not a movie.—Judy Bloch