Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that Russia under Vladimir Putin is increasingly turning into a real dictatorship, a great North Korea. In a country where the opposition does not exist and which is less and less different from Stalin’s Soviet Union. It is truly shocking and horrifying that Putin has done this in just over two decades from the largest country in the world, and while it is clear that the West is not honey and milk, the fact is that Russia today is a clear example of totalitarian dictatorship. It is a country with a long history of killing critics, opponents, journalists and opposition politicians, and by a mere miracle, opposition politician Alexei Navalny survived the assassination. He is the main protagonist of the research documentary made by Canadian Daniel Roher and the film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award.
“Navalny” is one of those documentaries that functions as a real thriller, and Roher started shooting the film in Germany, where Navalny briefly settled down after being poisoned by the favorite poison of the Russian secret services – a newcomer. In August 2020, Navalny was poisoned while in the Siberian city of Tomsk. He fell ill on the way to Moscow, and only by a miracle and a combination of circumstances did he manage to survive and was transferred to Germany, where it was determined that he was indeed poisoned. While Navalny was recovering from poisoning in Germany with his family, he was contacted by Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grozhev, who had previously discovered and proven Russia’s links to various unpleasant events such as the involvement of two Russian officers in the 2014 Malaysian plane crash or double agent poisoning. Sergej Skripal in 2018.
Grozhev thus joined Navalny in Germany and their two organizations threw themselves into investigating who might be behind the assassination attempt on the Russian opposition. And it all seems really unreal and unbelievable, completely shocking, especially the realization that they not only discovered who exactly are the people responsible for Navalny’s poisoning, but also how they managed to get the recognition of one of the guys involved in the whole operation. And not only that, we see how all this leads to Putin, and through the story of Navalny we actually get the story of today’s Russia. And although Roher does not deal too much with Navalny’s policy, it is only mentioned on one occasion that it is a broad anti-Putin coalition in which there are various nationalist, almost neo-Nazi parties. Putin turned everything into democracy.
Before watching this documentary, I was not overly familiar with the character and work of Navalny, and apart from what could be read about him in the media in the last few years, I did not know much about what he was actually doing. However, we meet Navalny here as a brave man who knows very well what he is getting into and who is very aware of what fate awaits him. According to a man willing to sacrifice not only his freedom, but also his life for some ideals and justice, one simply has to feel some kind of respect, and although he has been convicted of various government accusations, Navalny was sentenced to another nine years shortly after the film premiered. prison. I am not familiar enough with the domestic political scene of Russia and it is difficult for me to guess what is happening there, but when practically all opposition politicians in a country are either underground or in prison, then it is clear that a lot is rotten there. Rating 9/10,
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