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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Bernard-Henri Lévy's "The Will to See"

Bernard-Henri Lévy with soldiers in Ukraine.

April 30, 2022
1045 Broxton Ave #2803, Los Angeles, CA 90024

Journalist, filmmaker, and philosopher, public intellectual and political provocateur, Bernard-Henri Lévy—whose name in France is distilled into the initials B.H.L.—spent the pandemic traveling between war zones and humanitarian crises. “There were no curfews for the forgotten wars,” says the narrator in Lévy’s latest film, The Will to See. Sent by a group of newspapers—Paris Match, La Repubblica, The Wall Street Journal, and Stern—to Nigeria, Syria Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and other embattled areas, Lévy documented acts and events he believed the world needed to see, footage that makes up this new film. His reporting from Ukraine, which includes an interview with President Zelensky, powerfully illustrates his point about paying attention. —Clara Molot

Photo courtesy of Hampstead Rose LLC