CNN’s Documentary Of A Jailed Putin Critic Is An Urgent, Unforgettable Film

Even if you already know the particulars of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s story — that he survived a Kremlin-backed poisoning attempt, only to end up an inmate at Penal Colony No. 2 in the town of Pokrov, east of Moscow, where he remains today — the narrative that unfolds in the CNN Films documentary “Navalny” will still keep you transfixed to the end. Right up until the moment, and you should know this going in, that events barrel toward a denouement featuring grainy camera footage of a gaunt-looking Navalny. Head shaved, he’s wearing dark prison fatigues, staring defiantly at the camera through the bars of a prison cell.

The most remarkable part of the film, which airs at 9 pm ET on CNN Sunday night, is actually how the outspoken Putin critic got there in the first place.

Willingly.

Navalny tells the story of how the now-45-year-old dissident political figure with a piercing stare and huge online following is one of the few people to have recovered from being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Afterwards, the charismatic Navalny not only picks right back up where he left off, with his anti-corruption and pro-democracy activism — he also links up with Bellingcat investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who helps him use international press attention to name and shame the hitmen who tried to kill him.

“We don’t realize how strong we actually are”

And after sufficiently embarrassing Putin’s goons, including by prank-calling an especially gullible would-be assassin into confirming crucial details of the plot, while director Daniel Roher’s camera was rolling?

Navalny packs his bags, and he and his wife Yulia Navalnaya board a plane headed right back to Moscow. No surprise, he doesn’t even make it through passport control before police show up and haul him off. Another Putin critic, locked away.

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you,” Navalny says directly to the camera towards the end of the film. Roher has just asked him what he wants supporters to know, if the worst happens.

“You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

It’s a credit both to Navalny’s brave face and infectious optimism, as well as the way Roher assembles this narrative into a quasi-thriller worthy of John le Carre, that many of “Navalny’s” viewers may find themselves on the edge of their seat through most of the 98-minute or so runtime. Despite knowing the likely outcome.

To Western audiences, in fact, that might be the most simultaneously inspiring and yet slightly inexplicable part of the film. I asked Roher if he understands why Navalny choose to go back to Russia, rather than remain in safety and continue his work from the outside.

“I think I do,” Roher told me, before pausing. “… I don’t know if I agree with his position. I don’t know if he was right in what he did. That was a decision he made between him and his higher power and his family. But at the end of the day, I believe if Alexei were here today with us, he would ask a question. And that question would be, ‘How am I supposed to, as the leader of the opposition, ask people to take to the streets, ask people to protest, ask people to put their lives and their careers and their families on the line, if I’m sitting comfortably in the West?

“And the answer is, he couldn’t possibly do that. He understood if he wanted to be the moral conscience of the nation, he had to lead by example. And show people that they should not be afraid. And that he wasn’t going to be afraid.”

Supporters who work for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation have certainly picked up right where he left off, releasing investigative work like “Putin’s Palace. History of the world’s largest bribe,” which has garnered more than 123 million views on YouTube as of the time of this writing.

A must-watch documentary

Meanwhile, if you didn’t know Navalny’s story and only followed his social media accounts, you could be forgiven for not realizing he’s in prison at all right now — and that he’s, instead, a busy, committed activist. He’s used social media in recent days to issue a call for French voters to support incumbent Emmanuel Macron in Sunday’s election; he’s called on Google and Meta to use their ad-tech to do an end-run around Putin’s iron control on media in Russia; and in a recent post, he lamented the killing by Russian soldiers of someone in Ukraine with the last name of Navalny.

With a photo of the dead man’s passport included in the post, Navalny surmised that Russian soldiers may have been looking for his own relatives. And speaking of Ukraine, that’s the other thing that makes Roher’s film — which will air on HBO Max at a later date, in addition to being available via video on demand — so remarkable.

It also serves as a dark prequel of sorts to the Russian horrors unfolding now in Ukraine.

“The lying, the propaganda, all of these things that are part of the playbook for this insidious war are seen in the film,” Roher told me. “The propaganda. The violence. The murder. It’s all there, and the tragedy is there were so many moments in history when Putin could have been stopped.”

Nevertheless, “we have to have hope. (Navalny) understands that those who are going up against these dark, evil, insidious forces must have hope. Navalny offers a light in a very dark place.”