Frihetens bittra smak

“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 portrait 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’.” — Peter Hames, London Film Festival

“Profoundly moving, politically provocative and apt to provoke moral outrage in anyone short of Vladimir Putin.” — John Anderson, Variety