The film about Navalny received two awards at once at a prestigious American festival: one of them was not given to anyone for many years

The film "Navalny" about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny received two awards at once at the Sundance Film Festival. This is stated in Facebook post by Alexei Navalny.

Photo: Shutterstock

The picture was recognized as the best documentary film according to the audience and the Festival Favorite Award.

The first award is traditionally given every year to a film that has won first place among others according to audience ratings.

But the second award is exceptional; it has not been awarded for many years. It is given only if the film, according to audience ratings, beats not only all documentaries, but also all feature films at the festival. In the case of Navalny, there are other 84 films.

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Sundance is the most prestigious festival in the world of documentary films, so receiving two awards at once is very honorable.

What is the movie about

The film tells about the events related to the poisoning of Navalny and the investigation. The politician became ill on August 20, 2020, when he was on board a plane flying from Tomsk to Moscow. He was taken to an Omsk hospital in a serious condition, and two days later he was transported to the German Charité clinic. As it turned out, Navalny was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent.

The Russian authorities and pro-government publications voiced a number of alternative versions, the main of which boiled down to accusing Navalny and his team of staging poisoning and Russophobia, denying the very fact of poisoning or making a different diagnosis, including alcohol poisoning or a hypoglycemic crisis. After recovering, Navalny returned to Russia, was detained right at the airport and soon sent to a colony as a violator of the conditional detention regime.

Production and release

The film was directed by Canadian documentary filmmaker Daniel Roer, who originally planned to make a film about one of the investigations of Hristo Grozev. Filming began shortly after Navalny came out of a coma and went on until his arrest in January 2021: according to the main character of the film, the film crew was next to him even at the border control at the airport. The film's director Daniel Roer compared the story to modern-day Shakespeare.

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It was produced by HBO Max and CNN Films in partnership with Fishbowl Films, Raefilm and Cottage M. The project was produced by Raefilm's Diana Becker and Melanie Miller, Cottage M's Shane Boris, CNN Films' Amy Entelis and Courtney Sexton, and Maria Pevchikh.

The film premiered on January 25, 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival. A mass release is expected in 2022 on CNN in the US, as well as on the streaming platforms HBO MAX and CNN+.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• On the morning of August 20, 2020, during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), Alexei Navalny, became ill on the plane. The liner made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized in emergency hospital No. 1, in the toxic intensive care unit. There the politician fell into a coma.
• Ex-FSB officer and opposition politician Gennady Gudkov toldwhy Navalny's associates and other politicians call the version of the involvement of the special services a priority, as well as how and with what the oppositionist could have been poisoned.
• August 21, the wife of Alexei Navalny Julia signed permission to transport her husband for treatment in Germany. On the morning of August 22, Navalny taken by plane to Berlin... He was still in a coma.
• The clinic where Navalny was taken confirmed the assumptions about his poisoning... Clinical studies have indicated a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors.
• Transportation of an opposition politician to Germany on a special medical plane paid for by Russian businessman Boris Ziminwho now lives in the United States.
• In the United States Department of Commerce сообщилиthat Washington has good reason to believe that the research institutes (SRIs) of the Russian Defense Ministry are involved in the development of chemical and biological weapons.
• September 4th German laboratory found traces of Novichok in Navalny's skin, blood and urine samples.
• On September 7, the Charite clinic, where Alexei Navalny was located, released a new message: politics brought out of an artificial coma and began to gradually disconnect from the ventilator.
• On September 10, it became known that Navalny completely recovered, memory and speech returned to him.
• September 15 politician for the first time since poisoning posted a photo on Instagram. The New York Times wrote that he intends to return to Russia.
• On September 23rd, the clinic announced that Navalny was discharged... In total, he spent 32 days in a German hospital.
• In November, the US Congress condemned the poisoning of Navalny and called on the United States and the international community to impose sanctions against those involved.
• Mid-December results joint investigation Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN, with the participation of Der Spiegel, revealed that the attempt on the life of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Tomsk was the work of a group of FSB operatives.
• January 18, 2021 cops took Navalny from passport control at Sheremetyevo airport just after his return from Germany, where he received treatment after poisoning last summer. After that, he was arrested for 30 days.
• On February 2, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow satisfied the Federal Penitentiary Service's demand and replaced opposition leader Alexei Navalny's suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with a real sentence sent to jail... The court found that Navalny had systematically violated the rules of probation.
• On April 3, Navalny announced the head due to the fact that a doctor was not allowed to see him. About how effective such hunger strikes are, read in our material.
• April 19 Navalny transferred from the colony to the hospital for convicts... On Sunday, April 18, many countries joined an international protest against the conditions of detention and treatment of Navalny, who was in the Pokrovskaya colony, 100 kilometers east of Moscow. In addition, 77 Western writers, directors, actors and journalists, including Svetlana Aleksievich, Jude Law, Stephen Fry, Rafe Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Tom Stoppard and Peter Singer, wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin.
• The European Parliament awarded the Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is the main human rights award of the European Union.
• Read Navalny's interview with Time link.

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