The seeker of truth To be honest, the story of Anna Politkovskaya by and large passed me by when it took place to unfold in full force. In 2006, I was 16 years old, immersed in my inner world, I experienced my own freedom, far from politics. The reality of life in our country came much later. And it was like a bump to the head. Although even now I often look at the root of my life, forgetting what is really happening around me.
I've seen two documentaries about Anna's life. A Bitter Taste of Freedom and A Letter to Anna. They are united by the fact that each of them covers about the same events of her biography, as well as collected interviews from different stages of the journalist’s life. Their country of origin is distinguished by Russia and Switzerland/Germany. The existence of foreign films and a large number of short videos translated into different languages about Anna on the Internet only emphasizes the interest of the whole world in the personality of Politkovskaya. Needless to say, she was truly a unique person.
Documentaries are always difficult to evaluate. After all, there are no actors, scenery, special effects, unusual camera work. Analyzing documentaries, you analyze real life without embellishment along with real people and real events. I believe that here we can only assess how accurately the author was able to collect for the audience pieces of the present, to acquaint them with a person or objectively evaluate some part of the story. Although there may be a view of what happened, it must again be presented with the author's belief in his only objectivity.
Documentary is someone's sincere truth.
A few words about directing / editing. The author compiled his interviews with Anna along with interviews with her colleagues, friends, children, ex-husband and even Berezovsky after her death. I would like to note that the latter mentioned somehow does not fit sharply into the film, destroys its integrity, but judge for yourself. After all, this is the view of the foreigner who filmed Berezovsky as one of the murder suspects, trying to visibly debunk the myth. In addition, we see those events that occupied a special place in the life of the journalist – these are footage from the war in Chechnya, Nord-Ost and Beslan.
The interviews are incredible. On them Anna is good-natured, cheerful, honest and in moments very cheerful. We can see the passion with which she works. How simple and enthusiastic she looks at things, refers to the difficulties that arise. We see how respectable she raised children, the attitude of her colleagues to her self-sacrifice to work. The most amazing thing is that we see her fearlessness, her desire to tell the truth, her sincere desire for justice! That was the purpose of her life! That's what her close friends say. She came to her in spite of everything, and she filled her with such energy and enthusiasm. I think that when you see the truth once and for all and grow up with the people you help, any obstacles will become unimportant. Any warnings are meaningless. That's what happened to Politkovskaya.
How strange that Anna tells us that the Russian people do not want to take this information seriously, that even friends are not always willing to listen to it about Chechnya, everything that is happening there. The easiest thing we all do is to distance ourselves from the problem. But avoiding a problem is not the way to solve it. Anna did everything she could to make something click and move, trying to change the world at incredible risk. She still walked, for herself, in conscience, because she could no longer do otherwise and erase what she saw. Terrible images stood before her eyes: death as an endless streak, tears of defenseless people. Anna is an amazingly open person, the film shows us episodes of how she often helped ordinary people. Just from the heart. We see the antithesis: the depreciation of the lives of individual little people by the state machine on the one hand, and the importance and belief in the personality of each Anna Politkovskaya on the other.
For those unfamiliar with Anna’s work, look to get a feel for the story.
For those who know her - to once again admire her pure impulses and simply the light and truth that she tried to convey to her people.
10 out of 10