A drama about Russian liberal Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in Moscow in October 2006, has received the Best Documentary award at the World Film Festival in Montreal.
Los Angeles-based Marina Goldovskaya, who knew the journalist’s family personally for decades, made the film. She told Politkovskaya’s life in detail from childhood to the moment her life was tragically claimed by a murderer. The murder itself and the investigation, which is still underway, have not been included in the film.
A Bitter Taste of Freedom, a joint project between Russia and Sweden, was premiered in New York on August 20 and enjoyed huge success with the audience. It may also compete for the 84th Academy Awards if the International Documentary Association approves the biopic for the program.
A Bitter Taste of Freedom shared the Best Documentary award with a Slovakian-Czech movie, Nickyho Rodina, at the festival which ended in Montreal on August 28. This film tells the story of a man who saved 669 children from Prague, occupied by the Nazis during World War II. The prize for Best Picture went to a Belgian film, Come As You Are, by Geoffrey Enthovena.
A total of seven Russian films were included in the program of 2011’s World Film Festival in Montreal, including Once There Lived a Woman, a drama made by Andrey Smirnov, and Africa: Blood Beauty by Sergey Yastrzhembsky, former President Boris Yeltsin’s press-secretary.