U.S. Premiere

Lulled into repetitive news cycles by the mainstream US media, we can easily forget that words are dangerous, and speaking truth to power can get you killed. US journalists from both the right and left of the political spectrum have been jailed temporarily for protecting their sources, but these incidents are token punishments compared to harsher circumstances elsewhere. LETTER TO ANNA, directed by Eric Bergkraut and narrated by Susan Sarandon, tells one of the many stories of journalists imperiled by their passion for giving voice to the dispossessed and ignored.

In 2006, an unidentified man shot and killed internationally renowned Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya just inside of her apartment building. Prior to her assassination, she’d made a slew of enemies in Vladimir Putin’s administration because she did her job too well.

Her relentless work included investigating and writing about the torture and murder of Chechen civilians at the hands of military forces loyal to Moscow, and negotiating with Chechen rebels who took 700 hostages in a Moscow theater. She was even on her way to Beslan to aid the school hostage crisis there in 2004, but was poisoned and almost killed before she made it. Yet that didn’t stop her from writing about ignorance, hatred, and barbarism at the hand of her country's leaders.

Sadly, her murder was not a surprise. Politkovskaya is one of more than a dozen Russian journalists murdered since 2000. Fittingly, Bergkraut’s LETTER TO ANNA pays tribute to the type of person who abandoned all sense of self-preservation not to get the story or achieve fame, but to advocate for change and hold governments accountable for their crimes.

-Deborah L. Jaramillo

Post-screening discussion on Saturday, June 21

Panelists:
Eric Bergkraut, Director
Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times