The most surprising thing is that a film about Politkovskaya — a journalist and human rights activist who covered the Chechen conflict’s most acute problems, and who in turn was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building — is even available for rent in Russia. The decision to show such a film, and at a time when society has suddenly awakened from two decades of slumber, might seem imprudent. Especially since Goldovskaya’s film is not about politics, but about a person for whom conscience and conviction were, in the most literal sense, more important than her own life.

“I have no fear,” says Anna at the beginning of the film. She is young, dark haired, and not at all like the image familiar to most viewers. She adds: “We’ve gotten used to this fear.”

These words were spoken long before Politkovskaya’s first trip to Chechnya, during the time when her husband, journalist Alexander Politkovsky, was working at ‘Vzglyad’ and the program’s critical reporting had led to threats against the show’s authors and their families. Years later, Anna's investigations of crimes in the Caucasus made the show’s trip to the center of Chernobyl look like a childhood summer walk. The whole world religiously believes that this woman really had no fear. Even her arch-enemies, among whom number high-ranking law enforcement officers and the leaders of the patriotic parties, cannot deny that this journalist had uncompromising directness, desperate courage, and unwavering perseverance.

Marina Goldovskaya’s film breaks the strongly-established image of Anna Politkovskaya: the “Iron Lady” of journalism who fanatically scoured Chechnya’s bloodiest back alleys and with the speed of the printing press stamped out one accusatory article after another. Goldovskaya is not just an experienced documentary filmmaker, but also one of Anna Politkovskaya’s closest friends and shows the journalist as only a few knew her — a sensitive and romantic woman, a loving mother, and a witty and thoughtful hostess. The most important part of the film is not memories of friends and colleagues, but interviews with the heroine of the film in her cozy kitchen, out in the yard, and in a New York hotel room. Politkovskaya prepares dinner for her family, treats her guests to tea, walks the dog, and, in between, talks about how to force generals to respect themselves, how to keep from being afraid during shelling, and how not to turn away from scenes that that make even seasoned soldiers tremble.

Listening to Politkovskaya as she happily talks about her children or her love life, it is completely impossible to believe that this frail woman could openly “fight” the leaders of this world, sitting for days in a pit without food and water, continuing her work after an assassination attempt that almost destroyed her liver, kidneys, and endocrine system.

That is why the most shocking facet of this film is an understanding that Anna Politkovskaya, after all, did have fear, just like any other person. But she knew, unlike others, how to conquer this fear, driven as she was by a sense of duty and thirst for justice.

“Once again I have to go. Once again to Chechnya… I'm so tired of this… There are so many horrors there,” says Politkovskaya, and the viewer knows in advance that she would go there, and go there again and again, because she has long been the last hope for the mothers, the only defender of the war victims. She was a person to whom they could go and tell things that even priests refuse to hear. A perfect epigraph for this film would have been a preface from Akhmatova’s ‘Requiem’ – “And could you describe it? And I said, I can.”

Marina Goldovskaya began filming the movie in the early 1990s. The film was conceived as a look at the development of post-perestroika Russia through the prism of the family life of popular journalist Alexander Politkovsky, but it soon evolved into the life story of his wife, Anna, who rapidly transformed into one of the most powerful figures in the field of world journalism and human rights advocacy. The film was a kind of diary of Anna Politkovskaya — the viewer can now hear her own comments at the most critical moments — from her first missions to Chechnya, to the demands for justice for the ‘Nord-Ost’ victims.

When asked how she sees her audience today, Marina Goldovskaya replied: “I can clearly see younger viewers, mostly just young people. Yes, look, my generation, those who survived the euphoria of those times, and the disappointment. For us it is a nostalgic picture, while for young people it is something to make them think.”

In Rosbalt
December 19th, 2011

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