Mark Franchetti is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He worked for 23 years as a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, much of it as the paper's Moscow correspondent. Fluent in five languages, Franchetti was awarded the British Press Award in 2003, after reporting on the

Moscow theatre siege The Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater in Moscow by Chechen people, Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, resulting in the taking of 912 hostages. The attacker ...

, when he entered the building twice during the hostage taking to interview the terrorists and a

Foreign Press Association The Foreign Press Association (FPA) is a not-for-profit Friendly Society established in 1888, at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders. It organises press briefings and events at central locations in London and coordinates and facilitates the wor ...

award in 2004 for his reports on the alleged abuse of Iraqi civilians by U.S Marines. He writes mainly about Russia and the former Soviet Union, has reported extensively on the conflict in Chechnya and covered the wars in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Ukraine. He works both in print and TV and has presented and produced several prime time documentaries. Among them are, “Terror in Moscow” for Britain's C4 which was shortlisted for a BAFTA. For the BBC: “Britain’s Most Wanted”, about Andrei Lugovoi, following the death by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. “Should We Be Scared of Russia”, a BBC Panorama after the war in Georgia. “The Berlusconi Show”, about the former Italian Prime Minister and “Italy’s Bloodiest Mafia”, an investigation into the Camorra. In 2013 he produced The Condemned, his first feature-length documentary, spending three weeks inside a remote Russian prison exclusively for murderers. With the start of the

2014 Russian aggression against Ukraine The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then supported Russian paramilitaries who began a war in the eastern Donbas re ...

, he was involved in promoting armed militants in the east Ukraine "Vostok" calling them "brave and enthusiastic". In August of 2014 he was involved in freeing of Iryna Dovhan from detention of the Vostok battalion led by

Alexander Khodakovsky Alexander Sergeevich Khodakovsky ( rus, Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Ходако́вский, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ xədɐˈkofskʲɪj) is a Russian separatist paramilitary commander who is the commander of t ...

. In 2015 Franchetti produced and co-directed Bolshoi Babylon, a feature-length documentary about the Bolshoi Theatre for HBO and the BBC. In 2019 he co-directed and co-produced a feature-length documentary about Tommaso Buscetta titled ''Our Godfather'' which was bought by Netflix.

References

External links

* http://www.markfranchetti.com * http://www.thecondemneddoc.com
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* http://www.ourgodfatherdoc.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Franchetti, Mark Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) English male journalists English people of Italian descent British expatriates in Russia