Heather O’Neill is an award-winning journalist and documentary producer/director who saw a camerawoman in action in Baghdad, in 2006.

It was there she met Mary Rogers, a producer and camerawoman from CNN. O’Neill had never met a camerawoman before.

Through Rogers, O’Neill was introduced to several CNN camerawomen: Cynde Strand, Maria Fleet, Jane Evans and Margaret Moth. All had been working at CNN starting shortly after CNN’s founding in the early 1980s. 

In No Ordinary Life, O’Neill’s most recent documentary, we come to know these rather unusual and gutsy women. The dangers are real, the explosions loud, the bullets whiz by.

There is plenty of tear gas – and blood. Normal relationships? Forget about it.

The close calls captured in No Ordinary Life are almost too many to count. “This is how it ends,” says one of the camerawomen in the middle of a particularly harrowing incident in Iraq.

And yet it’s clear: These woman – nomads, traveling from war zone to war zone – love their work. They can’t imagine doing anything else. They are compelled to show the world what’s really happening on the front lines.

The ongoing tension depicted in No Ordinary Life is broken up by scenes of camaraderie, sisterhood, drinking, salty language – and humor.

“Need any help carrying that big camera, m’am?” calls out an American soldier to Mary Rogers.

“No,” she responds. “Need any help carrying your gun?”

Maybe 30 minutes into this one-hour-and-18-minute film, I felt a growing sense of foreboding. “This is incredibly dangerous,” I thought to myself.  “It’s only a matter of time before someone gets shot or killed.”

Sure enough, moments later in the film, we get the news, described here by Tom Johnson, former CEO of CNN (and executive producer of No Ordinary Life): “Margaret Moth had much of her jaw and mouth shot away by a sniper in Sarajevo. Only emergency surgical procedures by French medics and later at the Mayo Clinic enabled her to survive – and, at Margaret's insistence, to work again in the field.”

After a dozen surgeries, Moth returned, disfigured and with her speech impaired – to Sarajevo! Her sisters-in-arms welcomed her back -- and carried on.

If there is one regret we hear from our brave camerawomen, it's about those they leave behind. They are eyewitnesses to death, destruction, famine and more. Our camerawomen will get another assignment; those in the war zones will remain there, stranded.

“Combat photojournalism is a field that long has been dominated by men,” stated Johnson. “No Ordinary Life captures five CNN camerawomen who have braved the most dangerous areas of war in recent history. Viewers will see what it takes for frontline reporters and photographers to provide news from war zones such as now exist in the savage fighting of Ukraine.”

Here is a link to a movie trailer that will give you a feel for No Ordinary Life: https://www.noordinarylifefilm.com/

No Ordinary Life premieres this Monday, Sept. 5 at 10 p.m. EST on CNN.