In the aftermath of the startling and full of unanswered questions death of the political prisoner Alexei Navalny, who had been repeatedly persecuted by Vladimir Putin’s regime, before leaving his final breath at a maximum-security prison in the Arctic, the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival screens on Friday March 8th, at John Cassavetes theater, the breathtaking documentary Navalny by the Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher. The movie, recipient of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in last year's Oscar ceremony, seems to foreshadow in the hardest way the fate of the Russian activist, while rendering homage to his political legacy.
Navalny gradually evolves into a universal allegory on the human fight against authority, totalitarianism, and censorship, unraveling the thread of a dark conspiracy, where reality transcends even the wildest imagination.
The documentary unfolds a past murder attempt, shedding light onto the dramatic events of August 2020, when Navalny fell into a coma and was rushed from Siberia to Germany. The blood tests Navalny was submitted to, according to the official report issued by the German government, bore proof that he had been poisoned by the neurotoxic agent Novichok, a method systematically used in a series of shadowy events against political dissidents in Russia.
Navalny, an HBO MAX and CNN Films co-production, takes a close insight at Alexei Navalny, as he bravely investigates the murder attempt that he narrowly survived, with the invaluable support by the journalistic research group Bellingcat, in an agonizing effort to collect evidence against the perpetrators and the instigators of the attack. Navalny returned to Russia from Germany following his recovery, even though he was fully aware that his life was under immediate threat, solely driven by his desire to keep up the struggle against Putin’s absolutism.
The documentary, which premiered in January 2022 at the Sundance Festival, was lauded by the critics and the audience, whereas its triumph at the 95th Oscar ceremony went down as one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the history of the Academy Awards, as Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, took the stand and dedicated the award to all political prisoners around the globe fighting for democracy and liberty.
