NATALIA
This documentary short portrays Natalia Estemirova in her own words, with amateur footage and private home videos, interviews, news archive, photos, filmmakers’ interviews with her daughter Lana, closest friends and colleagues. The film explores Natasha’s character, what drove her, the importance of her work, the risks she took, the dilemma she faced as a single mother raising a child in a war zone, her defiance in the face of death threats, her murder and the legacy she left behind.
LANA
(Natalia’s daughter) – in-depth interviews with filmmakers and original footage of Lana shot by the filmmakers in several locations and different time periods, some homemade videos, family photos, news archive footage.
Growing up, Lana has a happy childhood but one nonetheless marked by the horrors of war. At her mother’s workplace, she sees desperate women searching for loved ones that rarely came back alive. At home when Natalia’s friends and colleagues visit, the conversations Lana overhears as a child are about horrific crimes.
Natalia is a loving mother but often absent or away, consumed by her mission to help the innocent victims of war. Aged only eight Lana has a recurring nightmare in which Russian soldiers burst into her house and shoot her mother dead in cold blood. With adolescence comes the frightening awareness of the terrible risks her mother is taking. And a mounting fear that the worst could happen.
Deeply traumatized by her mother’s murder, for years Lana battles with PTSD, shock and fear. As an orphaned adolescent she suffers a deep sense of abandonment and bafflement; why didn’t her mother stop her work when it became too dangerous? At least for Lana’s sake if not her own, why could she not leave Chechnya behind? What did she die for?
Today, a young married woman of strong character and purpose, Lana has yet to fully make peace with herself. She loves her mother and misses her deeply. She has immense respect for her work and sacrifice. And finally, she understands Natalia and what drove her, loving her for her humanity without idolizing or putting her on a pedestal.
Determined to keep the memory of her mother alive Lana, who lives outside Russia, has become a fierce public critic of human rights abuses in Russia. In June, 2025, Hachette published her memoir, Please Live, in the U.K. A memoir of growing up in Chechnya with her mother.
is Russia’s preeminent investigative reporter specializing on human rights abuses in Chechnya. She is a reporter at Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s last surviving opposition newspaper, which in 2021 was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
Since Putin came to power in 1999, a number of Novaya reporters and writers have been killed – the two most prominent are Anna Politkovskaya and her close friend Natalia Estemirova (the paper often published Estemirova’s hard-hitting exposes under a pseudonym).
Elena and Natalia Estemirova were close friends. After Politkovskaya’s murder in 2006 over her reporting of Chechnya, Elena took over her beat. Natalia was her Virgil: her guide, host, and close friend.
When she too was murdered, Elena vowed to continue Natalia’s work, regardless of the terrible risks involved. For years now Elena has done award winning investigative reporting in Chechnya – in a story that went around the world she singlehandedly revealed that Kadyrov’s security forces were killing gay men in Chechnya.
Her reporting has deeply angered the Chechen government. Elena has received numerous threats and on more than one occasion has spent time outside Russia for her safety.
In 2023, Elena was the victim of a vicious attack by security forces in Chechnya. She was severely beaten and put through a mock execution. Her captors shaved her head and covered her in green dye. Shocking photos of her back, covered in bruises, were published around the world.
It is beyond question that Elena Milashina’s life is at risk over her reporting. But she remains undeterred. By her own admission, what drives her, despite the risks and renewed Kremlin crackdown on Novaya Gazeta, is Natalia Estemirova. “To give up would be to betray Natasha’s memory,” Elena told the filmmakers. “I don’t feel I have a choice but to continue, I owe it to Natasha. She was fearless. I by contrast am condemned, to my fate and my loyalty to Natasha, come what may.”
In a parallel dismal and remarkable, Elena now faces hard choices that are eerily similar to Natalia’s; a stubborn, principled refusal to give up one’s purpose, even when faced with the risk of death. The cycle continues.
ELENA MILASHINA
EKATERINA SOKIRIANSKAYA
A longtime and widely respected Russian human rights activist and investigator, Ekaterina worked for Memorial, and was a close friend and colleague of Natalia Estemirova. She travelled regularly to Chechnya, working closely with Natalia and other colleagues from Memorial to collect evidence of grave human rights abuses. Ekaterina’s personal memories of Natalia and recollections of war-torn Chechnya made an invaluable contribution to the film.
Ekaterina was in Memorial’s office in Grozny on July 15, 2009, the day that Natalia Estemirova was abducted on her way to work and forced into a car by armed Chechen security forces. Hours later, Estemirova’s body was found in a field in a neighboring region. She had been shot five times at close range. Ekaterina continues to work exposing human rights abuses.
