Sundance Review: Daniel Roher Documentary Thriller ‘Navalny’
deadline.comAlexei Navalny, Russia’s highest-profile opposition figure, perennial thorn in Putin’s side and currently a guest in state prison, gets a vigorous up-close-and-personal look in this eventful, fest-moving, never-a-dull-moment documentary from Daniel Roher.
A collaboration between HBO Max and CNN Films, Navalny, provides a sustained look at a good-looking, articulate and seemingly unafraid family man who came very close to being murdered on August 20, 2020 by what were quite clearly politically hired killers.
The privileged access provides the opportunity for an international public to get a handle on a driven personality who consistently said things very few others are willing to risk.
Anyone who follows contemporary international politics will eat it up.“I will be a kind of martyr ‘til the end of my days,” Navalny muses early on in very good English, and he certainly can’t claim that he didn’t know what would happen to him when he returned to Russia with his family on a commercial flight from Germany exactly a year ago and was immediately thrown into the penitentiary, where he remains.That Navalny has long been a thorn in Putin’s side is amusingly made clear in an excerpted televised talk the Russian leader gave a few years ago when he complained about his opponent at length but could never bring himself to utter his name.
Read more on deadline.com