# Navalny (Навальный)
*Navalny* (Russian: *Навальный*) is a 2022 documentary film directed by the Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher about [Alexei Navalny](https://www.edgepedia.org/alexei-navalny), the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, filmed around the events that followed his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie) Produced with CNN Films and [HBO Max](https://www.edgepedia.org/hbo-max), it follows Navalny's recovery in Germany, the investigation into the men who tried to kill him, and his decision to return to Russia, where he was arrested in January 2021.[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie) • [2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/) The film premiered at the [Sundance Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/sundance-film-festival) in January 2022 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards in March 2023.[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director | Daniel Roher, a Canadian documentary filmmaker[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie) • [4](https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/navalny) |
| Subject | Alexei Navalny, who survived a poisoning with the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok on 20 August 2020 during a flight to Moscow[2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/) |
| Premiere | 25 January 2022, Sundance Film Festival, under the concealed title "Untitled LP9"[5](https://www.sundance.org/blogs/navalny-introduces-the-world-to-alexei-navalny/) |
| Sundance awards | Festival Favorite Award and Audience Award (U.S. Documentary)[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie) |
| Oscar | Best Documentary Feature, 95th Academy Awards (2023), credited to Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller, and Shane Boris[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023) |
| Running time | 98 minutes; original language English and Russian[6](https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/film/navalny/) |
| Reception | 98% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 102 reviews[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/navalny) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
August 2020, aboard a commercial flight from Tomsk to Moscow: Navalny writhes in agony in the aisle, begging crew members for water as he suspects he is dying.[17](https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022/04/15/cnn-films-to-premiere-alexey-navalny-documentary-for-cnn-and-cnn-on-sunday-april-24-fresh-from-north-american-special-event-screenings/) The plane makes an emergency landing in Omsk, where Russian doctors keep him under their care and under observation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government intervenes, and Navalny is flown out on an ambulance jet to Berlin's Charité hospital.[18](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/) There, European labs reach their finding: he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent whose detection in the body can be difficult.[18](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/) Western governments call it a Russian state assassination attempt.[19](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/navalny-portrait-kremlin-critic-wins-best-documentary-oscar-2023-03-13/)
Navalny recovers in Germany with his wife Yulia and their children, and Roher's cameras are there for all of it: rehab exercises, family meals, jokes about security protocols. Navalny is a lively, vain-in-a-human-way, funny subject, a former lawyer who built a national opposition movement out of anti-corruption investigations published on YouTube, where his videos reach millions of viewers and some of his TikToks hit 50 million views.[18](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/) Then he turns from patient to prosecutor. He partners with Christo Grozev of the investigative outlet [Bellingcat](https://www.edgepedia.org/bellingcat), which specializes in open-source intelligence, trawling data as mundane as car registrations and flight manifests.[20](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-bitter-russian-truths-of-navalny) Grozev's team reconstructs the operation: a unit of FSB officers with toxicology training had shadowed Navalny's travels for years, tailing him on trips where he collected samples of his own underwear for independent labs. Step by step, the film watches the deduction land, name by name, until Grozev holds the phone numbers of the men who poisoned him.
**The film's famous centerpiece is the phone call.** In a rented Airbnb in Germany's Black Forest, at 3:30 in the morning to catch the suspects off guard, Navalny sits at a table with Grozev and Maria Pevchikh and calls the FSB hit team one by one on speakerphone, posing as an aide to a top FSB official demanding to know why the assassination failed.[21](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/23/alexei-navalny-documentary-film) The first few men hang up immediately.[22](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-04-11/alexei-navalny-review-documentary-putin-russia) Then comes Konstantin Kudryavtsev, a chemist on the team, who assumes he is talking to a superior and, believing Navalny is dead, calmly explains the whole plot: how the poison was applied to Navalny's underwear, how the operation was rehearsed. "We did it just as planned, the way we rehearsed it many times," he says.[18](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/) Cinematographer Niki Waltl shot the scene handheld with long lenses and shallow focus to give it a spy-thriller texture, three people at a table with a phone, suspense as tight as any Bourne movie.[23](https://theasc.com/article/capturing-navalny/) • [24](https://nextbestpicture.com/navalny/) Navalny posts the call to YouTube, where it is viewed more than five million times within hours.[23](https://theasc.com/article/capturing-navalny/)
The exposé of the poisoning breaks worldwide on December 14, 2020.[18](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/) What remains is the decision the whole film has been circling: Navalny knows returning to Russia means prison, and he goes anyway. In January 2021 he flies to Moscow with Yulia, supporters throng the airport, and he is arrested at passport control.[19](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/navalny-portrait-kremlin-critic-wins-best-documentary-oscar-2023-03-13/) The landing sequence, the queue, the officers waiting, is the most nerve-racking stretch of the film precisely because nothing is dramatized. He is convicted of violating parole on an old charge and, by the time the film ends, is sentenced to a combined eleven and a half years; in August 2023 a Russian court added a further 19-year term on extremism charges.[25](https://deadline.com/2023/03/navalny-2023-oscar-best-documentary-feature-1235295364/) The film ends on his face in the courtroom, blowing a kiss, the gamble he chose having cost him his freedom.
### Characters
Alexei Navalny is the film's subject and its engine: a lawyer turned anti-corruption crusader and the most prominent critic of [Vladimir Putin](https://www.edgepedia.org/vladimir-putin) in Russia, filmed here joking through rehab, walking his family through the evidence, and cold-calling his own assassins.
[Yulia Navalnaya](https://www.edgepedia.org/yulia-navalnaya), his wife, is the film's second presence, steady and unsentimental, refusing to rehearse grief in advance and standing beside him on the flight back to Moscow.
Christo Grozev, the Bulgarian-born lead investigator for Bellingcat, supplies the detective work, tracing the FSB unit through phone metadata and travel records, and confessing on camera the night before the phone calls that he expects nothing to come of the plan.[21](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/23/alexei-navalny-documentary-film)
Maria Pevchikh, of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and an executive producer of the film, sits in on the phone-call operation.[17](https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022/04/15/cnn-films-to-premiere-alexey-navalny-documentary-for-cnn-and-cnn-on-sunday-april-24-fresh-from-north-american-special-event-screenings/) Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's press secretary, and [Leonid Volkov](https://www.edgepedia.org/leonid-volkov), his strategist, appear as the movement's organizers; Darya Navalnaya, his daughter, a student abroad, carries the family's private cost.
### Interpretations and controversies
The film has been criticized for staying so close to Navalny that it never interrogates him: his earlier statements on immigration and nationalism, which drew criticism within Russia and abroad, go unexamined, and the opposition movement he built is sketched thinly. Defenders answer that the film is a character study and a thriller by design, since Navalny himself asked for exactly that. After Navalny died in a Russian penal colony in February 2024, the film's restraint, refusing to make a martyr of a living man, took on a weight no one could have staged.
## Background: the poisoning
In August 2020 Navalny was flying from Siberia to Moscow when he developed symptoms of poisoning, was treated first in a Siberian hospital, and was then flown to Germany, where he recovered at the Charité hospital in Berlin and in the [Black Forest](https://www.edgepedia.org/black-forest).[8](https://www.fullframefest.org/film/navalny/) • [9](https://www.cined.com/making-of-the-navalny-documentary-behind-the-lens-interview-with-the-dp-niki-waltl/) The Kremlin denied any involvement, and Navalny himself blamed Vladimir Putin.[2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/) • [10](https://apnews.com/article/47a6478086bfe1a4d4e3fee9a5692ab2)
Director Daniel Roher and producer Odessa Rae met Navalny shortly after he woke from his coma and began filming with the cinematographer Niki Waltl, who lived near the Black Forest rehabilitation site. Roher shot the film as the events unfolded, starting while Navalny was in the Berlin clinic and continuing until his return to Russia in January 2021.[9](https://www.cined.com/making-of-the-navalny-documentary-behind-the-lens-interview-with-the-dp-niki-waltl/) • [11](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5873638)
## The investigation and the phone call
The film works as both a chronicle and an investigation. Navalny's team and investigative journalists used open-source data and leaks to identify a group of FSB officers linked to the poisoning, then tested the details of that version in practice.[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie) The investigative journalist Christo Grozev, then with the open-source investigation group Bellingcat, visits Navalny during his recovery to share what he has found.[2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/)
The film's centerpiece is a phone call. Posing as an assistant to a senior Russian official, Navalny telephones Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an FSB officer allegedly involved in the operation, and extracts a confession: the poison was placed in the inseams of Navalny's underwear, the intent was death during the plane flight away from aid, and local police and hospital doctors helped cover traces.[12](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/navalny-russian-spy-thriller-dressed-documentary) The episode became an important part of the public evidence base in the poisoning case.[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie)
The return flight to Moscow in January 2021 closes the film: Navalny's plane was diverted to a different airport, where he was arrested on arrival, and his anti-corruption organization was later dismantled, with many team members forced to leave the country.[2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/) • [5](https://www.sundance.org/blogs/navalny-introduces-the-world-to-alexei-navalny/)
## Secrecy and title
For security reasons the production was kept strictly secret until the last-minute announcement of its Sundance premiere.[2](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/) Until the day of the premiere the film competed under the codename "Untitled LP9"; one of its producers explained the choice: the FSB had a code name for Kudryavtsev, "Love Potion No. 9", which became the production's fake title.[5](https://www.sundance.org/blogs/navalny-introduces-the-world-to-alexei-navalny/) Hours before the premiere, the Russian government added Navalny and his allies to its official registry of terrorists and extremists.[5](https://www.sundance.org/blogs/navalny-introduces-the-world-to-alexei-navalny/)
## Reception and awards
The film was a hit at Sundance 2022, winning both the documentary audience award and the Festival Favorite Award, and it also received the BAFTA for its category.[10](https://apnews.com/article/47a6478086bfe1a4d4e3fee9a5692ab2) • [11](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5873638) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 98% Tomatometer from 102 reviews; critics' consensus called it "as gripping as any thriller" while noting the seriousness of the subject.[7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/navalny) [Sight and Sound](https://www.edgepedia.org/sight-and-sound)'s review described the film as more spy thriller than documentary, praising its pacing while questioning the emphasis on suspense over Navalny's political career.[12](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/navalny-russian-spy-thriller-dressed-documentary)
At the 95th Academy Awards in March 2023, *Navalny* won Best Documentary Feature against *All That Breathes*, *All the Beauty and the Bloodshed*, *Fire of Love*, and *A House Made of Splinters*. Accepting the award, Roher dedicated the statuette to Navalny and to political prisoners around the world.[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023) • [10](https://apnews.com/article/47a6478086bfe1a4d4e3fee9a5692ab2) Navalny learned of the win from his lawyer while attending a court hearing by video link from prison, according to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.[13](https://apnews.com/article/b230e110e101808a48988cd9f2540a79) The Oscar also drew some criticism from [Ukrainians](https://www.edgepedia.org/ukrainians), who pointed to Navalny's earlier statements on Crimea and to Russian imperialism; the Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev defended the film's platform, noting that Roher had used it to condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine.[14](https://time.com/6262460/oscars-alexei-navalny-documentary-ukraine-russia/)
## Aftermath
Navalny remained imprisoned after the film's release, serving sentences of two years and eight months, and then nine years added in 2022.[11](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5873638) • [15](https://distribution.arte.tv/fiche/BECOMING_NAVALNY) He died in prison on 16 February 2024.[15](https://distribution.arte.tv/fiche/BECOMING_NAVALNY) Writing in MoMA's magazine after his death, Roher reflected on his subject and on what documentary filmmaking can and cannot accomplish.[16](https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1052) Navalny's team later distributed the film free to Russian viewers through a website, since no legal streaming of the film exists in Russia.[1](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie)
## References
1. [Navalny. CNN and HBO Documentary Film, navalny.com](https://navalny.com/en/materials/movie)
2. [Navalny, DOCVILLE film festival](https://www.docville.be/en/film/2022/navalny/)
3. [The 95th Academy Awards | 2023, Oscars.org](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2023)
4. [NAVALNY, Siskel Film Center](https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/navalny)
5. ["Navalny" Introduces the World to Alexei Navalny, Sundance Institute](https://www.sundance.org/blogs/navalny-introduces-the-world-to-alexei-navalny/)
6. [Navalny, New Zealand International Film Festival](https://www.nziff.co.nz/nziff-2022/film/navalny/)
7. [Navalny, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/navalny)
8. [Navalny, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival](https://www.fullframefest.org/film/navalny/)
9. [Making of "Navalny" Documentary, CineD](https://www.cined.com/making-of-the-navalny-documentary-behind-the-lens-interview-with-the-dp-niki-waltl/)
10. ['Navalny,' about dissident fighting Kremlin, wins doc Oscar, AP News](https://apnews.com/article/47a6478086bfe1a4d4e3fee9a5692ab2)
11. [Документальный фильм «Навальный» награжден премией «Оскар», Коммерсантъ](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5873638)
12. [Navalny review: more spy thriller than documentary, Sight and Sound (BFI)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/navalny-russian-spy-thriller-dressed-documentary)
13. [Imprisoned Navalny learns documentary about him wins Oscar, AP News](https://apnews.com/article/b230e110e101808a48988cd9f2540a79)
14. [Why Some Ukrainians Aren't Happy With Navalny's Oscar Win, TIME](https://time.com/6262460/oscars-alexei-navalny-documentary-ukraine-russia/)
15. [BECOMING NAVALNY, ARTE Distribution](https://distribution.arte.tv/fiche/BECOMING_NAVALNY)
16. [Daniel Roher Remembers Alexei Navalny, MoMA Magazine](https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1052)
17. [https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022/04/15/cnn-films-to-premiere-alexey-navalny-documentary-for-cnn-and-cnn-on-sunday-april-24-fresh-from-north-american-special-event-screenings/](https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022/04/15/cnn-films-to-premiere-alexey-navalny-documentary-for-cnn-and-cnn-on-sunday-april-24-fresh-from-north-american-special-event-screenings/)
18. [https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/navalny-review-alexei-navalny-vladimir-putin-1235163437/)
19. [https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/navalny-portrait-kremlin-critic-wins-best-documentary-oscar-2023-03-13/](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/navalny-portrait-kremlin-critic-wins-best-documentary-oscar-2023-03-13/)
20. [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-bitter-russian-truths-of-navalny](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-bitter-russian-truths-of-navalny)
21. [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/23/alexei-navalny-documentary-film](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/23/alexei-navalny-documentary-film)
22. [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-04-11/alexei-navalny-review-documentary-putin-russia](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-04-11/alexei-navalny-review-documentary-putin-russia)
23. [https://theasc.com/article/capturing-navalny/](https://theasc.com/article/capturing-navalny/)
24. [https://nextbestpicture.com/navalny/](https://nextbestpicture.com/navalny/)
25. [https://deadline.com/2023/03/navalny-2023-oscar-best-documentary-feature-1235295364/](https://deadline.com/2023/03/navalny-2023-oscar-best-documentary-feature-1235295364/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Documentary films by subject: politics, war, and society › Released 2017 to 2026*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license