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.