The Brut X platform offers Fixers, a documentary about fixers. A word that may mean nothing to you. And it is precisely for this reason that this documentary was made. Fixer is profession. Fixers help journalists work in foreign countries. These premises, women and men, are very precious. They make it possible to report in complete safety and to have privileged access. Charles Villa is a senior reporter for Brut. He regularly travels abroad, to dangerous terrain, sometimes at war. During each report, he decided to film his fixers, without whom he could not have done much.
Shadow people who take all the risks
“Very quickly, I started filming them because everything I learned in the field came, most of the time, from my fixers, because they know the premises and the region”, explains the journalist at the microphone. d’Europe 1. “I found it very surprising that we never hear them. It is always the French and foreign reporters who are put forward and who take the light. We put them forward for their courage, whereas ‘actually it’s thanks to the fixers and their contacts.”
However, Charles Villa reminds us that it is the fixers who take the most risks. “They stay put and they are the ones who have to assume if there is a problem after the broadcast of the report. We had to make a film about them, so that they are better protected, that they have insurance and that they are better considered by the profession, in France and abroad”, he believes.
A profession and a vocation
In Fixers, we thus discover Hussain, a fixer in Afghanistan, Sabiti in the Congo, Alex and Sasha in the Ukraine, Aref in Syria and Miguel in Mexico, who helped to produce 200 reports on drug trafficking and almost died five times. These very different profiles show that being a fixer is more than a job, behind it is a desire to be useful to one’s country.
“I filmed Alex a bit at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. He was in charge of a DIY store in Kviv and he spoke French very well. When the war broke out, he said to himself that he was going to help the French reporters, because there were many who came to the country”, specifies to note micro Charles Villa. “At the beginning of the war in Syria it was the same: many people from civil society, in particular teachers who spoke English or French, who became fixers to help foreign journalists cover the news in their country, because hey wanted to denounce the war Fixer is both a profession, with expertise and experience, and both a vocation that is born in people who want to help their country emerge from a crisis. “
The documentary also tells how Charles Villa found himself this time helping his Afghan fixer, Hussain, and his family last summer. Not to report, but so he can leave his country. Hussain was threatened, following the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, for having helped the international media to produce reports. Fixers is available on Brut X from Thursday.