Navalny

Daniel Roher’s documentary about the prominent Vadimere Putin critic Alexey Navalny is part thriller, part comedy, and part PR video. It's very effective at all three. Made before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the picture tracks the extraordinary events related to the poisoning of the anti-authoritarian Russian opposition leader with a lethal nerve agent in August of 2020 and the subsequent investigation into the poisoning that occurred during his recovery. We learn about Navalny through a lengthy camera-facing interview with the charming, confident, movie-star handsome smooth-talker, coupled with incredible fly-on-the-wall video taken by himself, his family, and a Bulgarian investigative journalist named Christo Grozev. This film is as much Grozev's as it is Roher’s. In fact, the Canadian documentarian Roher (known primarily for the wonderful 2019 Rock 'n' Roll doc, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band) had planned to make the film about Grozev's investigations when Navalny came out of the coma he'd been in since the poisoning. Grozev is the lead Russia investigator with the Netherlands-based investigative journalism group Bellingcat, which specialises in fact-checking, open-source intelligence, security threats, and understanding the weaponization of information. We watch as Grozev uncovers information about the men who allegedly planned the poisoning that nearly killed Navalny, and then, in a lengthy segment that serves as the movie's centrepiece, we see Navalny cold-calling these guys, getting them essentially to confess to his attempted murder, and posting the footage on YouTube.

Roher devotes little time to the less sexy side of Navalny. His embrace of right-wing opposition leaders and partners in Russia is explained away with the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend style logic. And while we cheer and laugh at how a small handful of people can embarrass or trick the ultrapowerful Putin regime and its operatives using tools as simple as a phone and YouTube, the underlying message of the film is far less upbeat and optimistic. The successful quest to get the truth out to the masses doesn't seem to affect much change in the course of historical events or to Navalny's ultimate fate—he's still alive but in a Russian prison. This film now makes the rounds and gives the speeches he no longer can.