“The personality of Anna Politkovskaya was much larger”. Killed the Russian journalist’s sister on “Words of War”

The thriller on the Russian of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Words of War, opens today in American cinemas. The filmmakers took into account some of the concerns of inaccuracy concerning the scenario raised by his family, said Politkovskaya’s sister, Elena Kudimova, at the BBC.

The film comes out just in time for World Press Freedom Day. War words have been produced by Sean Penn. Anna Politkovskaya is played by Maxine Peake, and one of the main male roles is played by Jason Isaacs.

Words of War tells the story of the legendary Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya.

In Russia, his name is synonymous with courage and an indomitable spirit. She has taken importance for her surveys on human rights violations in Chechnya – a region in southern Russia, which fought two wars for independence in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

Her older sister, Elena Kudimova, describes her as “someone who, despite all the threats and the danger to her life, continued to do her job until the end”.

Politkovskaya openly criticized the Russian authorities and President Putin himself. Although she has received many threats over the years, she has refused to retreat.

Her sister remembers that if Politkovskaya considered emigration, she has always changed her mind at the last moment. She would say: “I can’t leave because no one else will help people here.”

From 1999, Politkovskaya went to Chechnya almost every month for several years. Kudimova remembers that for many related and desperate people, Politkovskaya has become “the last appeal” – the one who could do things correctly.

She participated in negotiations for Nord-Ost, the 2002 hostage crisis in a Moscow theater, after the Chechen rebels specifically asked for it.

In 2004, she hoped to help resolve the Beslan crisis, where heavily armed activists organized hostages in a school for three days.

However, she never arrived there – she was poisoned on the plane when she was on her way to Beslan.

In 2006, Politkovskaya was killed in the elevator of his building in Moscow. Six men were convicted of the murder, but the person who ordered him has never been identified.

Her sister Elena doubts that the brain will never be brought to justice. “If they had wanted to find it, they would probably have done it now,” adds Kudimova.

Before the film’s release, Politkovskaya’s family raised concerns about the words of the war, believing that the film took too much freedom with the truth.

Although filmmakers insist that the drama is based on real events, they emphasize that it is not a biography.

However, Politkovskaya’s sister notes that the filmmakers took into account the family’s comments, and some scenes that have raised the most questions have been deleted from the final cup.

“”[Anna’s son] Ilya was described in the original script as a kind of petticoat, [and in the film] Anna has no romance with [Dmitry] Muratov, “she said.

Dmitry Muratov, journalist winner of the Nobel Prize, was the former colleague of Anna Politkovsky in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

According to Kudimova, Maxine Peake depicts her sister with precision, although she thinks that Anna’s personality was “much larger and more complex” than what is represented on the screen.

“Her real life had much more dramatic episodes than those shown in the film,” she said.

Kudimova criticized the film’s decor to look too much in the clichés in cold weather.

“I was struck by the fact that it is constantly snowing, as if Russia had only one season. In reality, there are all of us.” However, Kudimova is grateful that the film helps preserve the memory of his sister.

Kudimova said that Anna had never thought of her own heritage. She recalled how, at one point, someone had suggested Anna to write an autobiography – she was in the forties at the time.

Anna had laughed at the idea, saying it looked more like something you do when you’re a hundred. But then she had the idea of ​​writing six news.

At the end of everyone, she said, she had to die-but did not do it, for various reasons. And they were going to be funny stories.

When asked how Anna would like to remember him, Elena says that her sister thought about her heritage: “She just wanted to live.”

Words of War will be published in the United Kingdom on June 30