Anna Politkovskaya

Filming of a biopic about Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006, will begin in Europe this summer. She will be played by Maxine Peake, a two-time BAFTA nominee. “Mother Russia”, produced by the American studio Good Films Collective and Australian Luminosity Entertainment, will be shot in the UK and Latvia. The project will also be presented at the film market in Cannes.

Oscar nominee Ciarán Hinds will play Dmitry Muratova, editor of Novaya Gazeta for which Politkovskaya works, and Nobel Prize winner Dmitry Muratova, while Jason Isaacs, best known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in the BAFTA-nominated Harry Potter films, will play Politkovskaya’s husband, Alexander. Eric Poppen penned the screenplay for the film directed by James Strong.

Maxine SummitKieran Hinds

The film will focus on the journalistic and human rights activities of Politkovskaya, who has written extensively on conflict and corruption in Chechnya. She was also known as a critic of Vladimir Putin she. In 2006, when Politkovskaya was 48 years old, she was murdered in the entrance of her Moscow home. The crime was characterized as contract killing. Investigation and lawsuits took years. As a result, six people were sentenced to prison, five of whom pleaded not guilty, but the names of those who ordered the murder were never officially released. The Politkovskaya murder has become one of the most resonant social and political events in Russia’s new history, and has sparked outrage on the world stage.

Several streets in different countries of the world, as well as a garden in Moscow, are named in memory of Anna Politkovskaya. In addition, there is the Anna Politkovskaya Award from the international non-governmental organization Reach All Women in War and the National Award “Ayar Fork” named after her. Anna Politkovskaya” was founded by the Union of Journalists of Russia.