By Carole Landry (AFP) – 

11/20/2009

PARIS — Two years before she was killed in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment, Anna Politkovskaya mused about life as the Kremlin's number one enemy and pronounced it a "miracle" that she was still alive.

The journalist, lauded for her fearless reporting of Russian atrocities in Chechnya, made the comment during the interviews that make up the moving documentary film "Lettre a Anna" (Letter to Anna) released this week in France.

The letter of the title is written by Swiss filmmaker Eric Bergkraut who had recorded four in-depth interviews with Politkovskaya for another film on Russia when she was murdered on October 7, 2006.

He quickly decided to shift focus and the result is a 75-minute documentary featuring Politkovskaya as well as conversations with her grieving family and colleagues at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where she worked.

"Why am I still alive? I think it's probably a miracle," she says in a haunting interview filmed in Geneva in 2004.

"I would like to think that someone wants me to spend more time on this Earth. But I do believe it's a miracle."

Politkovskaya was 48 years old when she died, shot four times as she returned home from a shopping trip, carrying groceries but also a gift for her daughter Vera, who was four months pregnant with her first grand-child.

Video footage from a security camera showed her killer -- a dark-haired man wearing a cap who knew the code to enter her building on Lesnaya Street, now a pilgrimage site for human rights activists in Russia.

At the time of her murder, Politkovskaya was writing a report on the torture tactics used by Chechnya's Moscow-annointed leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has managed to contain an insurgency there through brute repression.

Four men accused of involvement in her murder were acquitted in a trial in February but the Supreme Court quashed the acquittal and ordered a re-trial. The family believes those responsible for her murder have yet to face justice.

The film features closeup shots of her hazel-coloured eyes peering out from her wire-rimmed glasses and many touching scenes of her laughing and chatting with close friend Zainap Gashayeva, a Chechen human rights activist.

In one scene, Politkovskaya spoke of a videocassette, given to her by a Russian soldier, of Chechen combatants beaten and humiliated after agreeing to a an offer of amnesty from Moscow.

"There are 74 men seen on this film. Only three are alive," she explained. "So that's what I'm working on."

In the documentary, Politkovskaya expounds on her sharply critical view of Vladimir Putin, who was then Russia's president, and of the poor state of civil liberties in Russia after two wars in Chechnya.

"How many lives have to be lost to call it a genocide?" she asked. "For me, according to my values, this is a genocide."

Politkovskaya was aware that her life was in danger but she continued her work, even at a time when few people in Russia seemed interested in what she had to say.

"Of course I'm afraid," she commented in one of the interviews. "But I feel that I share the fate of civilians. I don't see any difference between them and me."

She was briefly captured by Russian soldiers in Chechnya in 2001 and survived a violent bout of poisoning 2004 after drinking a cup of tea on a plane taking her from Moscow to Beslan to cover the Chechen school hostage-taking.

The film ends with Politkovskaya's daughter declaring that "Russia is still a dangerous place for independent thinkers." At least 10 journalists have been killed since Politkovskaya's murder.

Politkovskaya's fate has had a strong resonance in France where leading human rights and press freedom groups supported the production of the documentary.

French actress Catherine Deneuve lends her voice to dub Politkovskaya's Russian language interviews and debates have been organised at movie theatres following the screening.

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