Filming in Donbas - Winter 2022
Jack Losh is a documentary filmmaker and journalist who has spent more than a decade covering the front lines of conflict, crime and environmental crisis across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
His films focus on real people caught up in turbulent places, and have been shortlisted at the Royal Television Society Awards, the British Journalism Awards and Europe’s top war-reporting prize, the Prix Bayeux, among others.
He has made documentaries for the BBC, Netflix, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, VICE News and The Guardian, with his work showcased at film festivals including Tribeca. While covering major stories, Jack has spoken live from the field on BBC News, Sky News and Al Jazeera.
His photography and written features have been published by The New York Times, GQ, National Geographic, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other leading international outlets.
In the field
On patrol with wildlife rangers in the Central Africa Republic
After war broke out in eastern Ukraine, Jack travelled there as a freelancer in 2015, renting a room with a local family in Russian-occupied Donetsk and reporting on the battlefront and humanitarian crisis on both sides of the line. Since then, his work has taken him to complex, hostile and remote environments around the world – telling the stories of marginalised groups, documenting their power to endure, and capturing the human reality of life on the ground.
Assignments have included filming with Iraqi women clearing explosives in former ISIS territory, doctors saving lives in rebel-held areas of the Central African Republic, and Kurdish footballers during the world cup for unrecognised states.
Elsewhere he has joined wildlife rangers on counter-poaching operations, reported from besieged refugee camps, tracked down the last surviving veterans of Britain’s WWII African army, and gone on patrol with UN peacekeepers. His reporting has taken him on expeditions with conservationists tracking Persian leopards, specialist vets treating mountain gorillas in high-altitude rainforest, and indigenous hunter-gatherers living in the Congo Basin.
He has interviewed warlords in rebel strongholds, exposed poaching by Sudanese paramilitaries, and covered front-line body exchanges in the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh.
More recently, Jack returned to Ukraine to cover Russia’s full-scale invasion, reporting from the southern, eastern and northern battlefields. From Kharkiv, he documented the chaotic first days of the war, focusing on the impact of indiscriminate attacks against civilians and witnessing the early stages of the Ukrainian resistance. As the war has ground on, he has embedded with special forces, front-line firefighters and civilians under bombardment, telling their stories in partnership with major international media outlets.
Back in the UK, he has filmed with police detectives leading complex investigations, doctors treating critically-injured patients, and Romanian gang members during undercover reporting.
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Jack graduated from the University of Bristol with a first-class honours degree in English Literature. After working as a staff journalist in London, he went freelance before moving into documentary filmmaking. He is a recipient of a Pulitzer Center grant to cover the Central African Republic’s civil war and has consulted for a UK Foreign Office initiative about reporting on conflict-related sexual violence. The Imperial War Museum has archived his photography portfolio documenting the war in Ukraine in its Contemporary Conflict collection.
He has completed numerous journalistic embeds in high-risk environments with leading NGOs and UN agencies, including UNHCR, MSF, Rainforest Foundation UK, UNICEF, WCS, Halo Trust, WFP and War Child.
Visit his profile for Chartwell Speakers, a global speaker agency that represents journalists, adventurers and in-depth experts for events and conferences worldwide.
AWARDS & SCREENINGS:
Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents
Shortlisted: Grand Format Television (Channel 4 News, Ukraine’s Frontline Rescuers) and Written Press (Telegraph Magazine)
Shortlisted: Written Press (Foreign Policy feature about a Ukrainian family in Donbas just before the full-scale invasion)
Print trophy, 3rd place (Foreign Policy feature about wildlife rangers in rebel-held Central African Republic)
RTS Television Journalism Awards Nominated: Short Film category (Guardian Documentaries, Desert Fire).
British Journalism Awards
Shortlisted: Crime & Legal Journalism (Channel 4 Dispatches, Britain's Shoplifting Gangs Exposed)
Shortlisted: Foreign Affairs (BBC Newsnight, Ukraine’s Siege Runners)
Shortlisted: Photojournalism (Nagorno-Karabakh war)
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant to cover the Central African Republic’s civil war.
Tribeca Film Festival Official Selection - War Games (producer).
Amnesty Media Awards
Finalist: Broadcast (Channel 4 News, Ukraine’s Frontline Rescuers)
Shortlisted: Photojournalism (Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine)
Shortlisted: Written News and Photojournalism (Nagorno-Karabakh war)
Shortlisted: Photojournalism (WWII African soldiers who fought for Britain)
Imperial War Museum Photography portfolio documenting the war in Ukraine archived in the museum’s Contemporary Conflict collection.
Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism (Thomson Reuters Foundation) Finalist: Freelance category.
Frontline Club Awards Shortlisted: Print (Vice News feature about the media clampdown in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine)
One World Media Awards Longlisted: News Award (Ukraine, Channel 4 News). Shortlisted: New Voice, Print and Short Film categories.
Fetisov Journalism Awards
Shortlisted: Conflict category - GQ and Telegraph Magazine (Ukraine)
Shortlisted: Environmental Journalism - Foreign Policy (Uganda)
True Story Award Shortlisted - Telegraph Magazine, Ukraine.
Belfast Photo Festival Shortlisted: ‘A War Refrozen’, Nagorno-Karabakh.
Bradt Travel Writing Awards Shortlisted and published in Bradt’s ‘Travel Write’ anthology.
Documentary Family Awards Winner: ‘Faith & Religion’ category - Nagorno-Karabakh.
