Words of War (2025)

The film opens inside a cramped Moscow newsroom where Anna Politkovskaya works at a small independent newspaper. She moves through the pressroom with a clipboard and a battered dictaphone, preparing to file yet another dispatch. Cameras and typewriters clack around her as she speaks briefly with colleagues about a new assignment: a trip to Chechnya to document the aftermath of recent military operations. Anna accepts the task and, packing a notebook and a recorder, boards a night flight to the North Caucasus.

On arrival in Grozny, Anna disembarks under the grey sky and walks through streets scarred by shelling. She interviews survivors in makeshift shelters, records a veteran recounting a midnight raid, and attends a terse local hearing where municipal officials refuse to answer questions about disappearances. She records testimony from a mother who says soldiers took her son; Anna carefully annotates names and dates in her notebook. She transcribes eyewitness statements in a dim hotel room and types on a portable laptop, then dispatches the copy by satellite phone when a courier fails to arrive. She witnesses a soldier detain a young man in the street; she follows at a discreet distance, filming on a compact camera. Back in Moscow, her editor receives her files and prepares a front-page exposé accusing military units of abuses and alleging state protection for those responsible.

After publication, Anna receives a telephone call that begins with veiled threats and ends with silence. She continues to write, filing piece after piece that ties specific incidents in Chechnya to higher levels of authority in Moscow. She interviews families of detainees and compiles names of soldiers and officials implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings. At home late one evening, a delivery man leaves a plain envelope containing an anonymous note warning her to stop. Anna crumples the paper, places it in a drawer, and continues assembling evidence for a long-form investigation into corruption and abuses connected to powerful figures.

A scene shows Anna returning to Chechnya months later, confronting a local commander in a makeshift administration office. He refuses to speak on camera but gestures angrily when she presses him about missing civilians. She slips out with a recording of the encounter and a list of units he refused to name. On the return flight to Moscow, she opens a thermos and sips tea; the camera lingers on her hand. Later that night she collapses in her flat, vomiting, disoriented and running a high fever. She is admitted to hospital and undergoes tests; doctors diagnose poisoning. Nurses call in a specialist and administer charcoal and fluids while Anna lies pale and unsteady. As she recovers slowly, nurses wheel her into a consultation room where a physician warns her that the poisoning was deliberate and that returning to Chechnya will increase her risk. Anna listens, then writes in her notebook: "I will carry on."

In the weeks after the poisoning, she receives more direct intimidation. Unknown men loiter near her apartment building; a car follows her from a courthouse. They leave leaflets under her door alleging treason; another night someone sprays graffiti across the face of a portrait hung in the office. At a televised forum, a pro-government commentator calls her reporting "traitorous fabrications," citing unspecified "national security" concerns. Anna attends the broadcast and confronts the host inside the green room, demanding a correction; security escorts her out. Back at the paper she learns that a shipment of her investigative files has been intercepted at a postal sorting center. She calls colleagues and instructs them to duplicate everything.

Her son appears in the narrative as a young adult who lives separately but visits regularly. He listens as Anna talks late into the night about names, dates and documents. He expresses fear for her safety and urges her to accept offers of protection or to publish her material anonymously. Anna refuses to relinquish her byline. She argues that the people she reports on deserve to be named and that her responsibility is to the victims. When he presses her about leaving the country, she answers that fleeing would be a betrayal of the work and the people she promised to help. Their conversations are terse, then affectionate; he leaves each morning with a grim expression and a copy of her latest column.

The film follows Anna as she publishes a series of articles that connect alleged human-rights abuses in Chechnya to corrupt contracts and Kremlin-linked businesses. She compiles testimony about secret detentions and writes about judicial obstruction in cases against security-service personnel. As her byline attracts international attention, foreign correspondents call and ask to republish her work. She appears at a human-rights forum and accepts an award, then walks out to a street demonstration where protesters chant, then dissolve into confrontations with riot police. Anna records a soldier's confession at a roadside café and smuggles the audio tape back to Moscow.

Threats escalate into physical violence on more than one occasion. In one scene, Anna is assaulted in a dim alley by unidentified attackers who shove her against a wall and shout that she should stop publishing. She fights back, scraping her knuckles across a perpetrator's coat; passersby scatter and the assailants flee. She files a police report, but the precinct officer tampers with the paperwork and returns her statement unsigned. In another encounter, a group of men with diplomatic plates tails her car for blocks before she loses them in heavy traffic. Each attack leaves physical marks--bruises, cuts--and intensifies the surveillance montage that shows her apartment watched from a distance and phone lines tapped.

Anna seeks legal recourse by filing complaints and pressing for investigations into the disappearance of witnesses she interviewed. She makes repeated trips to courts and administrative agencies, presenting copies of her notes and recordings. Judges repeatedly delay hearings; one prosecutor refuses to charge implicated officers. She publishes an article that names a senior official and alleges his involvement in covering up abuses; the piece prompts heated debate in the Duma and puts Anna under intense public scrutiny.

The film portrays a succession of assassination attempts foiled by circumstance and courage. In one tense sequence, Anna receives a parcel at the office that contains a wrapped bottle labeled "tea." She opens it in a back room; a colleague protests and insists she take it to the lab. Laboratory technicians open the package and discover traces of a toxin on the rim, confirming that someone sought to poison a beverage intended for her. The discovery triggers public outrage and a police inquiry that stalls without resolution. Anna refuses to stop reporting and organizes clandestine interviews with victims who fear to speak on record.

The narrative interleaves Anna's investigative work with quiet, domestic scenes that reveal her personal life. She visits her elderly mother and makes dinner in a modest apartment. She walks the stairwells of her building and exchanges brief greetings with neighbors. Her son calls from abroad expressing concern, and she replies with a wry remark before returning to her desk. She signs letters to editors and writes a short note to a friend: "There are too many lives at stake." She mails a package of articles to an international NGO with instructions to publish them if she is silenced.

As public pressure mounts, the film shows officials in secure rooms discussing the blowback from Anna's articles. Men in suits argue over damage control and the need to root out alleged leaks. The camera remains on closed doors and impersonal hallways, emphasizing the institutional distance between decision-makers and Anna's frontline reporting. After one particularly damning article, Anna receives more forceful anonymous threats: postcards showing images of violence and a photograph of an elevator in her own building. This material appears in the film with close-ups of the photographs left on her table.

On October 7, 2006, the film moves toward its climax. In the morning, Anna prepares for the day, checking her notebooks and placing a voice recorder in a coat pocket. She steps into the building elevator carrying a small shopping bag. The elevator doors close; the camera follows them as they hum shut. A short time later, gunshots echo within the shaft. Residents in the corridor drop their bags and rush toward the sound. Building management opens the elevator and finds Anna sprawled on the floor, blood staining her coat. Paramedics arrive and attempt resuscitation. A stretcher carries her out into the ambulance, and lights flash as the vehicle pulls away.

A hospital corridor sequence follows where doctors work under bright lights. They pronounce the wounds fatal--Anna has been shot multiple times--and the camera cuts to a ledger in which a nurse writes the time of death and the date: October 7, 2006. The film uses this moment to show immediate official reactions: a press statement releasing scant details, the interior ministry promising an investigation, and vigil candles placed outside the newspaper's offices by grieving colleagues. The sequence explicitly states that Anna is the victim of a contract killing inside the elevator of her apartment building; the film shows investigators examining the scene, lifting fingerprints, and photographing spent shell casings.

After the killing, the narrative documents the investigation that follows. Detectives interrogate neighbors and review security footage from the building entrance and surrounding streets. Copies of Anna's notebooks and voice recordings become evidence in a public inquiry. Political reaction is swift and polarized: some officials condemn the murder while others deflect blame, calling for law enforcement to resolve the case quickly. International press coverage mounts; foreign governments issue statements urging a thorough investigation. The film presents this cascade of responses through press conferences and televised tributes.

The movie shows the newspaper staff holding a memorial service in the newsroom. Colleagues read passages from Anna's notes and replay interviews she recorded in Chechnya. Her son attends, standing at the back of the crowded room, gripping a folded jacket. He speaks briefly at the end of the service, telling assembled friends and colleagues that he will continue seeking answers. The film records the family's grief in private moments: late-night scenes at the flat where Anna once worked, photographs spread across a table, and the son riffling through envelopes of correspondence and research files.

Later in the film, as investigations drag on, the narrative includes scenes of legal procedures and courtrooms where suspects are brought before magistrates. The camera lingers on the faces of defendants as prosecutors present evidence. The film reports that Anna's death is widely believed to have been arranged by unknown parties who contracted the killers; it does not identify a definitive mastermind. Detectives follow leads that wind through intermediaries and men with criminal records, but the film shows multiple dead ends and stalled prosecutions. Interviews with investigators within the film depict frustration at the lack of clear accountability despite arrests of several persons alleged to have been involved in the logistics of the murder.

An epilogue sequence follows that contrasts international recognition of Anna's work with continuing questions about those responsible for her death. The film shows memorials held in multiple cities and footage of international organizations issuing statements. It also shows, intercut with these tributes, a February 2023 scene where members of Anna's family issue a public statement expressing concern about a dramatized script they had been given at the start of a film production. In that recorded statement they assert that they had not contributed to the script, that they had not granted permission for their names to be used, and that they question the factual accuracy of what they had been shown.

The final scenes cut between archival-style images of Anna at work and credits that name the actors portraying her and her associates. Interposed are brief captions that document the real-world provenance of the film as an artwork: the production's original announcement under the working title Mother Russia at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival with actors Maxine Peake, Jason Isaacs and Ciarán Hinds attached; principal photography commencing in Latvia in late 2022 and continuing into early 2023; a casting change when Naomi Battrick replaces Emma D'Arcy; the involvement of producers Miriam Segal and Mark Maxey and the addition of Sean Penn as an executive producer in 2024. The credits note that sales agent Concourse Media presented the completed picture under the title Words of War in 2024 and that domestic distribution rights were later acquired by Decal Releasing, with a U.S. theatrical release beginning May 2, 2025, followed by a United Kingdom and Ireland opening on June 27, 2025.

The film closes on a long shot of the Moscow building where Anna lived, the sun setting behind it as the credits continue to roll. The last image is a still photograph of Anna at a desk, pen poised above a notebook, followed by a title card stating the date of her death: October 7, 2006. The screen fades to black, and final credit text lists a brief note that her reporting on Chechnya and her attempts to expose corruption continued despite poisoning, intimidation and violence until her assassination in the elevator of her home. The last moments include acknowledgments of the cast and crew and a dedication to the memory of Anna Politkovskaya.

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No, Words of War (2025) does not have a post-credits scene. Multiple sources confirm that the film's closing credits feature a poignant tribute rather than any additional content after the credits roll, with no mentions of post-credits material.

The credits themselves include a photo collage of investigative journalists killed for political reasons worldwide, such as Sokratis Giolias and Lokman Slim, with some images shown burning while shadowy political leaders appear in the background in gray tones. This sequence builds emotionally, culminating in a final image of Anna Politkovskaya, with Vladimir Putin's face faintly visible behind it, underscoring the film's themes of journalistic peril and state-sponsored violence. The credits also conclude with a disclaimer text: "Anna Politkovskaya was a real person, and the story portrayed in the film is based on real events. The dialogue is imagined, and certain fictional scenes are interpolated. The film has not been authorized by Anna's family, the Novaya Gazeta or any of the other people involved in the story. Egorov is an entirely fictional character and is not intended to resemble any actual person, living or dead," emphasizing the blend of fact and fiction while honoring Politkovskaya's legacy. Reviewers describe this as the film's most impactful element, a "strikingly poignant" and "stirring denouement" that lingers with audiences, evoking the raw grief of truth-seekers silenced forever.

Anna Politkovskaya gains the trust of the Chechen people by staying behind alone in a village after telling her Russian chaperone to leave. This act impresses Anzor, a local leader, who convinces his neighbors to open up to her. She hears about the atrocities they are suffering, which shocks her and motivates her to expose the truth about the Russian actions in Chechnya.

Anna's family, including her husband Alexander and children Vera and Ilya, are deeply concerned about her safety as she continues to report from the war zone. They beg her to reconsider her dangerous assignments, but Anna remains committed to her work despite the risks it poses to her family life.

The film shows Anna butting heads with her editor, Dmitry Muratov, as her coverage of Chechnya consumes all her other work and threatens to take over the newspaper. This conflict highlights the challenges she faces in balancing her investigative reporting with the demands of her role at Novaya Gazeta.

The film depicts key events such as Anna's reporting on the conflict in Chechnya, her exposure of mass graves, and her involvement in covering the Moscow theatre crisis. It also shows her being poisoned and eventually murdered in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building.

The film portrays Vladimir Putin as a power-hungry leader whose actions in Chechnya are central to Anna's investigative reporting. Anna's work aims to expose the atrocities committed under Putin's governance, which puts her directly at odds with him and the Russian state.

No, Words of War (2025) is not family friendly, as it carries an R rating and depicts intense real-world themes from the life of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting scenes/aspects for children or sensitive viewers include: - References to war zones and killing fields in Chechnya. - Acts of intimidation, violence, and poisoning against the protagonist. - A contract killing and murder. - Family distress over personal safety risks. - Broader themes of state corruption, autocracy, and threats to journalists.