City College Remembers Journalist Brent Renaud

The Russian attack on Ukraine became personal for the City College of New York community in March. Brent Renaud, 51, an American documentary filmmaker and photojournalist, a City College master’s student, was killed on March 13 while covering the refugee crisis in Irpin, Ukraine for Time Studios. 

Renaud was a student in the MFA Creative Writing Program at City College. While studying in the MFA program, he continued his work as a filmmaker and photojournalist. “As accomplished and celebrated as Brent was while he was alive, he was humble and generous. He was engaged in professional endeavors of the highest caliber, and yet, he brought absolutely no ego or superiority to his presence in the class,” said Marc Palmieri, the professor for the MFA Workshop in Screenwriting course, which Renaud was enrolled in last fall.

Brent and his brother, Craig, produced work for major media outlets including HBO, Vice, and The New York Times. Brent and Craig Renaud created documentaries that explored human suffering and social and political issues. The Renaud brothers won a Peabody Award in 2015 for “Last Chance High,” a docu-series that tells the stories of students in a Chicago high school who had emotional disorders and were expelled from other schools. More of the Renaud brothers’ profound work can be found on their website. 

The New York Times, where Brent Renaud was a former contributor, remembers him as “A Crusading Filmmaker.” He was nominated for many awards including the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary, the One World Media Refugee Reporting Award, and the Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Broadcast News Award. 

Russian troops appear to have targeted journalists covering the war in Ukraine. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 18 journalists were killed and 13 were injured. Among them, Ukrainian journalist Yevhenii Sakun was killed in March when Russian troops shelled a TV tower in Kyiv. Oksana Baulina, a Russian journalist from The Insider, was also killed in March by Russian shelling in Kyiv. Brent Renaud was the first American journalist to be killed while reporting on the war. Juan Arredondo, the photographer working alongside Renaud, was wounded. 

Renaud’s death deeply saddened CCNY students and faculty, especially those who knew him closely. “When a student is lost—like in this case, or any other—it is a unique kind of pain for me because for those few months during which we shared this special intention, we had only assumed that the future would be there, only to find that it was not,” said Palmieri.