ABOUT

JOURNALIST AND DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER

Mark Franchetti worked 23 years as a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London. He was based in Moscow for a very long time.

He was awarded the British Press Award for best foreign reporter for his coverage of the Moscow theatre siege when he entered the building twice during the hostage taking to interview the terrorists. He also won a Foreign Press Association award for his front-line report on the death of Iraqi civilians at the hand of U.S Marines which the judges cited as “the best of an excellent field of Iraq war reportage.”

He has been shortlisted several times for both awards.

He has written extensively about Russia and the former Soviet Union and covered the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Ukraine. He has also reported on the Italian mafia.

Working both in print and film, he produced The Condemned, (BBC Storyville) an indy feature-length documentary about a remote Russian prison exclusively for murderers which was voted a Grierson award finalist. He produced and co-directed Bolshoi Babylon, a feature-length documentary about life inside the Bolshoi Theatre, for HBO and the BBC.

Leendert Jan Vis copyright Paperclip

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically in more than 20 countries. The access granted on both films was unprecedented.

In 2018 he co-produced and co-directed Our Godfather, a feature length documentary about Tommaso Buscetta, the first high ranking Cosa Nostra boss to give evidence against the mafia. The film tells - for the first time - the Buscetta story with exclusive access to his family which is breaking its silence after 30 years in hiding.

His most recent work is Natasha, a short documentary he co-produced and co-directed about the life and murder of

Natalia Estemirova, one of Russia's most respected human rights activists.

Natasha premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2025 where it received a Special Jury Mention.

He has also presented and produced several BBC prime time documentaries, notably about Silvio Berlusconi, the Camorra (the Naples mafia), Putin's Russia and the Litvinenko polonium poisoning case. Terror in Moscow, a Channel 4 documentary he co-produced about the Moscow theatre hostage crisis was nominated for a BAFTA.