Letter to Anna

On 7 October 2006, the Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered – such is the price of free speech in Russia. She was at that time working, as often before, on an article about kidnapping and killing in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was a leading critic of what is called the Second Chechen War, in which Russian forces have carried out bloody massacres of the civilian population while the Putin government has pushed the country towards dictatorship. Her book Putin's Russia presents a crushing picture of the post–socialist regime and a leader she compares to both Stalin and a character out of Gogol. The journalist had previously survived an attempted poisoning on an airplane, and being detained for three days in Chechnya. However, the third murder attempt was successful. Eric Bergkraut's film brings together the recollections of friends, family members and colleagues, creating a picture of a brave woman, an intellectual and fighter who revived the Russian tradition of dissent. As chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov puts it: it wasn't just Anna that was murdered, but freedom and journalism.