Break-in worries director of film about poisoned spy

The director of a documentary about a poisoned former Russian spy says a break-in at his home may be a sign he is being watched.

Andrei Nekrasov said his home in Finland was ransacked, windows were broken and books strewn about.

A photo of Alexander Litvinenko, the formerKGB agentand critic of the Kremlin who died of radiation poisoning in a London hospital late last year, was left amid the wreckage.

"It could be some thugs, you know," Nekrasov told reporters at a screening of his documentary Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, a last-minute addition to the program at the Cannes Film Festival.

"It's difficult for me to believe that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin orders my house in Finland being broken [into], but who knows?

"But in this atmosphere, there are so many people who would do something like this, because they were told by the government ideology that there are these enemies out there who plot against Russia," he said.

The film tracks the final four years of the exile's life. On his deathbed, Litvinenko, 43,accused Putin of ordering his killing.

Nekrasov said the film is an attempt to puthis friend'skilling in context, exploring Russia's conflict in Chechnya and Putin's record while in power.

It also includes interviews with the late Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building in 2006, and with Litvinenko's widow, Marina, who will attend the film's official screening Saturday.

Famous photo left behind

Nekrasov said he has suspicions about the break-in at his home, which Finnish police have said may have just been drunken vandals, because of the photo that was left behind: the famous shot of Litvinenko, hairless and dying in a London hospital, that had been placed on Nekrasov's bed.

On Tuesday, British authorities investigating Litvinenko's deathdemanded theextradition of another formerRussian KGB, Andrei Lugovoi, who is the prime suspectin the poisoning.

Russian authorities have refused that demand, saying it is unconstitutional.