Film-maker fears returning to Russia

A Russian documentary-maker and friend of Alexander Litvinenko, said yesterday that he feared for his safety after being warned "not to make anti-Russian films".

Andrei Nekrasov, who has just finished a documentary for BBC2, on the Litvinenko murder, said that relatives in Russia had received the threat this week from "an old friend".

"I am concerned for my safety," he told The Times. "I do not know if it is safe for me to return to my home in St Petersburg."

Mr Nekrasov was close to Litvinenko and visited him regularly in hospital after his poisoning with radioactive polonium-210. His film for Storyville My Friend Sacha: a Very Russian Murder is said to be a powerful indictment of the authoritarianism of President Putin's Russia. It includes an interview with Litvinenko's widow, Marina, and footage implicating the Kremlin in the attempted murder of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch who has been granted asylum in Britain.

Mr Nekrasov has also contributed to Panorama, How to Poison a Spy, on BBC1, which will also be shown on Monday evening.

It will not name the murderer, but it is expected to implicate the Russian authorities in Litvinenko's poisoning.

The two programmes will anger the Kremlin, which claims that the Western media is biased against Mr Putin. Russia denies any involvement in Litvinenko's killing.

Hollywood studios are in a race to bring out the first film on the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Michael Mann, who was behind Miami Vice and The Aviator, and Columbia Pictures offered .5 million for the rights to Death of a Dissident - written by the agent's widow, Marina.

They face competition from Johnny Depp's company who want to film Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Dissident, written by Alan Cowell, the New York Times London bureau chief. A third film Blowing Up Russia is being developed by the Beverley Hills-based Braun Entertainment Group. and is a spy thriller based on Litvinenko's own book alleging that President Putin ordered his agents to blow up apartment blocks in Moscow and blame it on Chechen separatists.

Kremlin officials have let it be known they will take steps to ban all three productions from being seen in Russia.

Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor