Navalny

Vancouver Premiere

Keynote Speaker: Lisa Sundstrom, Department of Political Science and Principal Investigator, ActInCourts Network, UBC

On 20 August 2020, Alexei Navalny fell severely ill on a plane coming from Siberia. He was poisoned and could only be rescued within inches of his life. The murder attempt came after years of an ever-increasing showdown between Navalny and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. In Navalny, filmmaker Daniel Roher has access to Navalny’s inner circle while he recuperates in exile in Germany, and subsequently tries to find the perpetrators with the aid of research network Bellingcat. The Bellingcat investigator manages to identify the kill team that went after Navalny. In a truly stunning scene, Navalny talks on the telephone to the men who tried to murder him. Equally thriller-like is the plane ride back from Germany to Moscow, where Navalny knows the authorities will await him. In extensive interviews, Roher dives into Navalny’s incentives and his vision for Russia, while not shying away from difficult topics—like his past alignments with extreme right nationalists. A must-see film about a charismatic leader, who is presently detained in a penal colony, and a country sliding ever more into darkness.