Navalny is a 2022 documentary film directed by Daniel Roher and co-produced by CNN.
It is about Russian opposition leader Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny. The film opens in 2021 with Navalny, in Germany, making a trip back to Russia. The movie then skips back three years and sketches out the recent history of his opposition to autocratic Russian president Vladimir Putin.
In 2020, Navalny was on a flight out of Tomsk when he became violently ill. It was revealed that he was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent that's well known to be used by Russian secret intelligence. After narrowly escaping death, Navalny was flown out of Russia to Germany. He and his people, along with a journalist from investigative group Bellingcat, then set out to discover just who had poisoned him.
Eleven months after the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, on February 16, 2024, Navalny died in prison.
Tropes:
- Downer Ending: Navalny comes back to Russia and, sure enough, is arrested immediately at the airport. The film ends with him still in prison. He later died in prison, on February 16, 2024.
- Fangirl: Navalny's wife Yulia wants to get everybody in the family playing chess because she just finished watching The Queen's Gambit.
- How We Got Here: The opening scenes follow Navalny headed back to Russia, before skipping back three years.
- The Ken Burns Effect: In-Universe and done by the bad guys, actually, as a Russian news program zooms in on a still of Navalny while the host talks about what a creepy guy he is.
- Mononymous Biopic Title: Technically it isn't a biopic, it's a documentary, but the use of the trope is the same, announcing exactly what the subject is.
- The Scottish Trope: Navalny chuckles as he talks about how no one in state-controlled Russian media will even say his name. Cut to a talking head on Russian TV saying "In regards to that character you mentioned." Vladimir Putin himself, in a press conference, speaks of "that patient in the Berlin clinic."
- Stock Footage: A lot of news coverage, including clips of a 2011 rally which is somewhat embarrassing to Navalny as he was speaking at the same rally with neo-Nazi types.
- String Theory: Navalny, Christo Grozev of Bellingcat, and their team have a stereotypical wall chart of the conspiracy, with various suspects at the bottom, lots of red string connecting photos, and a photo of Putin at the top. Navalny even lampshades this when he says it's "a flow chart like in a movie!"
- Talking Heads: Multiple segments from an interview with Navalny, along with segments interviewing others such as his wife and daughter.
