The crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, sometimes described as ‘the heart and conscience of Russia’, was murdered in Moscow in 2006 and her alleged killers have only recently been arrested. In this new documentary by one of Russia’s leading documentary directors, Marina Goldovskaya, the focus is on the character of Politkovskaya, enlivened by striking footage of the journalist herself, her views, her personal life, and the life of her family and relations. She is revealed as someone committed to journalism as a vocation, whose interest in the problems of refugees led her to tell ’people’s stories’, and ultimately to her reports from Chechnya. Gorbachev, one of the few politicians interviewed, pays tribute to her special qualities, but this is not a ‘political’ film in the obvious sense. Goldovskaya rather weaves the political and the personal to provide an intensely human tribute to the character and personality of a reporter who sought to provide ‘a testimony of the innocent’. –BFI
Marina Goldovskaya, (born 1941) is an eminent Russian born documentary cinematographer famed for her candid portrayal of people. She has documented many types of people including simple folk, seamstresses, a female astronaut, literary and artistic legends, as well as political leaders.
The recipient of numerous documentary film and lifetime achievement awards, she currently serves as a professor at the UCLA School of Film and Television in Los Angeles. —Wikipedia
