Now Streaming: Navalny

In the opening scene of Navalny, now streaming on HBO Max, Russian politician Alexei Navalny sits for an interview with filmmaker Daniel Roher in an empty restaurant somewhere in Germany in late 2020. Tall and handsome, with intense blue eyes, Navalny is the telegenic face of a new generation of political opposition to Vladimir Putin. Clearly at home in front of a camera, he immediately takes control of the interview. When asked by Roher to contemplate his possible death at the hands of the Kremlin, Navalny demurs. “Oh, come on Daniel,” he says with a wry smile. “No, no way. It’s like you’re making a movie for the case of my death. Like, again, I’m ready to answer your question, but please let it be another movie. Movie number two. Like, let’s make a thriller out of this movie, and in the case I would be killed, let’s make a boring movie of memory.”

With millions of followers across YouTube, Tik Tok and other social media platforms, Navalny knows how to connect with his audience and what unfolds does play out like a Hollywood thriller, complete with a complex online investigation into the FSB agents assigned to poison him and an amazing on camera phone call between Navalny and Konstantin Kudryavtsev, one of the Russian agents, in which Navalny impersonates a security official and tricks Kudryavtsev into detailing the assassination plot.

Tragically, as charismatic and modern as Navalny is, he is no match for Putin’s old school malice and strong-arm tactics. Upon his return to Moscow in January 2021, after five months of exile in Germany, he is arrested at the airport on specious charges and remains in prison today. In the final image of Navalny in the film, he looks out from a prison cell, a gaunt figure with a shaved head, nearly unrecognizable, his face now the image of crushed hope.