Latest news with #AnnaPolitkovskaya
Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Words of War review — Maxine Peake is fearsome as a Putin critic
A muscular cast, a gifted TV director and an executive producer credit for Sean Penn lift this political biopic above its decidedly creaky limitations. This is the true-life tale of the impossibly brave Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was a committed Putin critic and in 2006 was assassinated in her Moscow apartment building. The touchstones are Veronica Guerin and A Private War. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews Politkovskaya is played with typically fearsome integrity by Maxine Peake, charting the journalist's coverage of the Second Chechen War and her increasingly strident attacks on Putin.'The only terrorist that the Russian people need to fear is their own president,' she writes. Politkovskaya's concerned husband is played by Jason Isaacs , her harried editor by Ciarán Hinds and her nemesis from the secret police by Ian Hart. All are speaking in their own accents. This isn't a bad choice from the director James Strong (Mr Bates vs The Post Office) — nobody wants to watch a bunch of seasoned thesps rolling their Russian Rs like wannabe Bond villains — but it's not entirely successful. It clashes with the physical environment (Russian language signage, newsflashes and headlines) and occasionally flirts with absurdity, as if an Irish newspaper editor is warning a Manchester journalist about an FSB heavy from Liverpool. Other quibbles include a willowy non-role for Harry Lawtey as Politkovskaya's lachrymose son Ilya, and a sympathetic Chechen terrorist who says, 'It's an honour to meet you, Anna Politkovskaya. Back home they write songs about you.' Really? Still, it works. Peake is that good. Isaacs is also that good. And the subject is compelling and timely. The film suggests that Martin Niemöller's famous line about authoritarian regimes coming for the journalists first has rarely been more relevant (see Trump's shakedown of the White House press pool). A powerful closing title sequence, set to Radiohead's Lucky, features a collage of some of the 1,500 journalists killed pursuing stories, claims the film, in the modern era.★★★☆☆ In cinemas from Jun 27 and on digital from Jun 30 Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit to find out more. Which films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments and follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Words of War review – Maxine Peake leads line as murdered Putin-critic journalist Anna Politkovskaya
This British-American co-production offers a dramatised portrait of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) who was assassinated in 2006. Politkovskaya's gutsy, impassioned reporting on the second Chechen war was highly critical of the Kremlin, the Russian army and Vladimir Putin personally. (The fact that she was murdered on his birthday was surely no coincidence.) Nineteen years after her death, she remains a folk hero worldwide for resistances to autocracy, especially given the rise in repression everywhere and constant threats to journalists. Given all that, the film deserves respect for the subject matter, even though this is a pretty basic rendition of Politkovskaya's story, a little too sticky with hagiographic sentimentality and the cliches of crusading journalist-led movies. It also should be noted that Politkovskaya's family haven't given the film their blessing; some of them may not be happy, for instance, with the thinly written characterisations of their fictional counterparts, like her son Ilya (Harry Lawtey) who is made to seem peevish and self-absorbed even when his feelings are understandable. ('I'm not watching you die!' he bellows at one point.) In fact, the flawed peripheral characters are more interesting than Peake's Politkovskaya, who spends much of the film with her strong jaw jutting out, projecting nobility despite the over-lacquered blond wig inflicted on her. Her best scenes are those in which she spars with Jason Isaacs, who plays her husband, Sasha – a TV journalist clearly proud of his wife but jealous of her success – and with Ian Hart (always a treat when playing the heavy) as a sinister FSB secret policeman who loves history. The gently swelling strings in the score and flat lighting all serve to underscore the televisual atmosphere – even in what should be the film's climatic set piece, the disastrous siege at Moscow's Dubrovka theatre, a cataclysmic event that deserves more dynamic film-making than the bit of slow-motion and sound dimming offered here. Politkovskaya served as a negotiator between the Russian security forces and the Chechen terrorists; she was later poisoned on a plane headed to Beslan, where a school full of children were also killed by terrorists. Politkovskaya survived that particular assassination attempt but those who know her story will dread the arrival of the final blow. It is to the film's credit that over the end titles we see a portrait not just of the real Politkovskaya but also some of the 1,500 journalists worldwide who have been murdered in recent years. Words of War is on digital platforms from 30 June
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Post your questions for Maxine Peake
Maxine Peake's film career took off as Stephen Hawking's nurse and second wife in 2014's The Theory of Everything, in a role that the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw said she approached 'with delicacy'. It was a far cry from Twinkle the snarky dinner lady from Victoria Wood's sitcom Dinnerladies, but not the first time she portrayed a real-life person. She played Myra Hindley in the 2006 ITV drama See No Evil: The Moors Murders, and the titular 19th-century Yorkshire lesbian landowner in the 2010 BBC period drama The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. Peake has done a ton more TV: she played Veronica Ball in Channel 4's Shameless, Martha Costello in BBC One legal drama Silk, and Grace Middleton in BBC One drama series The Village. She's in that really weird (even for Black Mirror) black and white episode about the robotic dogs. She wrote and starred in a BBC Radio 4 play about Anne Scargill, who was married to Arthur. She used to play rugby for Wigan Ladies. And she pulled on a pair of hose to play Hamlet. Back on the big screen, the Bolton-born Peake was the lead in 2017's Funny Cow, where her performance as a northern 70s stand-up was described as 'magnificent' by Mark Kermode in the Observer. She's in Mike Leigh's historical drama Peterloo as radical working class mother Nellie, and plays Samuel Beckett's bit on the side in 2023 biopic Dance First. Now, in Words of War, she takes on the role of journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Russia in 2006. In this very publication Peake described her as 'a woman with immense courage and integrity who, despite numerous threats to her life, continued to be a blazing beacon of truth in a time and place where speaking truth was extremely dangerous'. Please get in your questions by 6pm on Tuesday 24 June and we'll print her answers in Film & Music in July. Words of War is available on digital platforms from 30 June.
Economist
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Economist
Anna Politkovskaya knew that tyranny respects no borders
'The entrance is well adapted for murder,' Anna Politkovskaya wrote in 2003, 'with dark corners in which you are your own rescue service.' She was describing the building in which a fellow journalist had been bludgeoned, but also foretelling her own death three years later. The assassination in her apartment block is the inexorable ending of 'Words of War', a new film about her life and fate. Politkovskaya's story and warnings are vital even now, amid the carnage in Ukraine. Especially now.
BBC News
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Anna Politkovskaya's persona was much greater'. Slain Russian journalist's sister on 'Words of War'
The thriller about slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Words of War, opens in US cinemas today. The filmmakers took into account some of the inaccuracy concerns about the script raised by her family, Politkovskaya's sister Elena Kudimova told the film is coming out just in time for the World Press Freedom Day. Words of War was produced by Sean Penn. Anna Politkovskaya is played by Maxine Peake, and one of the leading male roles is performed by Jason of War tells the story of legendary Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya. In Russia, her name is synonymous with courage and an indomitable spirit. She rose to prominence for her investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya - a region in southern Russia that fought two wars for independence in the 1990s and early 2000s. Her older sister, Elena Kudimova, describes her as "someone who, despite all the threats and the danger to her life, kept doing her work until the very end."Politkovskaya openly criticised the Russian authorities and President Putin himself. Despite receiving numerous threats over the years, she refused to back down. Her sister recalls that while Politkovskaya considered emigration, she always changed her mind at the last moment. She would say: "I can't leave because nobody else will help the people here." Reporting the war in Chechnya From 1999, Politkovskaya traveled to Chechnya almost every month for several years. Kudimova recalls that for many wronged and desperate people, Politkovskaya became "the last resort" - the one who could make things right. She took part in the negotiations for Nord-Ost, the 2002 hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre, after the Chechen rebels specifically requested her. In 2004, she hoped to help resolve the crisis in Beslan, where heavily armed militants held hostages in a school for three days. However, she never made it there - she was poisoned on the plane while en route to 2006, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. Six men were convicted over the murder, but the person who ordered it has never been identified. Her sister Elena doubts that the mastermind will ever be brought to justice. "If they had wanted to find him, they probably would have done so by now," Kudimova adds. Avoiding clichés Before the film's release, Politkovskaya's family raised concerns about the Words of War script, believing the film took too many liberties with the truth. While the filmmakers insist that the drama is based on real events, they emphasise that it is not a biography. However, Politkovskaya's sister notes that the filmmakers did take the family's feedback into account, and certain scenes that raised the most questions were removed from the final cut."[Anna's son] Ilya was portrayed in the original script as a sort of womanizer, [and in the film] Anna doesn't have a romance with [Dmitry] Muratov," she said. Dmitry Muratov, a Nobel Prize-winning journalist, was Anna Politkovskaya's former colleague at the Russian newspaper Novaya to Kudimova, Maxine Peake portrays her sister accurately, though she believes Anna's personality was "much greater and more complex" than what is depicted on screen. "Her real life had far more dramatic episodes than those shown in the film," she criticised the film's setting for leaning too heavily into cold-weather clichés. "I was struck by the fact that it's constantly snowing, as if Russia has only one season. In reality, we have all four." However, Kudimova is grateful that the film helps preserve the memory of her sister. Anna's legacy Kudimova said that Anna never thought about her own legacy. She recalled how, at some point, someone had suggested Anna write an autobiography - she was in her 40s at the time. Anna had laughed at the idea, saying it felt more like something you do when you're a hundred. But then she came up with the idea of writing six short stories. At the end of each, she said, she was supposed to die - but didn't, for different reasons. And they were going to be funny stories. When asked about how Anna would want to be remembered, Elena says that her sister did dot think about her legacy: "She simply wanted to live."Words of War will be released in the UK on 30 June
