curated cinema: flip Putin the bird by watching this fantastic doc about Alexei Navalny
2022 doc *Navalny* is on Max in the US, Dogwoof on Demand in the UK
The world is such shit these days that my tolerance for awfulness has gotten absurdly high. It takes a lot to get me to shout back in surprise and horror at a breaking-news alert… and that happened today, when my phone blew up with the announcement that Alexei Navalny — Russian anti-corruption loudmouth, political renegade, and the biggest pain in Vladimir Putin’s ass — was dead.
Putin had Navalny killed. Of course he did. Either directly — Navalny had been poisoned before with the nerve agent Novichok, a favorite weapon deployed against the Russian dictator’s enemies — or indirectly, by sentencing him to a harsh Arctic Circle prison, “one of Russia’s toughest penal colonies.” Navalny was only 47 years old. (On the other hand, Navalny’s wife says she’s not sure she can even believe that her husband is dead, since the news comes only from state sources and Putin is not to be trusted. So who the hell knows what’s going on?)
In my review of the 2022 documentary Navalny, shot secretly by Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher, I said that “the more people everywhere know about Navalny,” who hadn’t been widely known outside Russia before, “the more difficult it may be for Putin to do him ultimate harm.” I appear to have been wrong about this.
But Navalny the film remains essential viewing. The hope that Navalny the man will continue to represent for a Russia beyond Putin is even more necessary now than it was two years ago. This is a terrific film, as gripping and as suspenseful as a finely wrought fictional thriller, and a sheer delight as a portrait of the man himself. Films don’t get much more daring or more crucial than this. And that’s even truer today.
UK: rent/buy on Prime, Apple TV, and Dogwoof on Demand; rent on Curzon Home Cinema
See Navalny at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
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