自由苦涩之味

Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya was killed in Moscow in October, 2006. In 2004, she had written: "Society has shown limitless apathy... We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance." and of her own pessimism: "the 'optimistic' forecast... is the death sentence for our grandchildren." [Putin's Russia (2004)] Filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya, who was Politkovskaya's teacher, then mentor, then close friend, has made an intensely personal film about Anna's growing politicization and human involvement with Chechnya and the increasingly repressive Putin government. The film is balanced between wrenching footage of violence in Chechnya and Moscow and graceful footage of Politkovskaya in her apartment, hotel rooms, even a hospital gurney, reflecting on her life, work and principles, that only a friend could have captured. An extraordinary documentary.