Cinema in Conversation: Navalny
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Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning documentary Navalny captures the harrowing political courage of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, anti-corruption campaigner, and political prisoner, following his 2020 poisoning by the FSB. In response to Putin’s Russia, where state television monopolizes the public narrative, long-form investigative documentary has emerged as the primary artistic and humanistic genre of political resistance. Featuring intimate access to Navalny as he investigates his own assassination, the film provides essential context for his 2021 return to Moscow, his immediate arrest, and his February 2024 death in an Arctic penal colony. While the regime sought to physically isolate dissent, Navalny’s team and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, continue their work from European exile along with other political activists, a testament to an emerging “archipelagic identity” connecting dissidents across the global diaspora.
This screening is hosted in conjunction with the course RU325/425: "Russian Literature and Identity" and the "Islands Humanities Theme," with an introduction and post-screening discussion led by Elena Monastireva Ansdell, Associate Professor of Russian at Colby College.
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Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning documentary Navalny captures the harrowing political courage of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, anti-corruption campaigner, and political prisoner, following his 2020 poisoning by the FSB. In response to Putin’s Russia, where state television monopolizes the public narrative, long-form investigative documentary has emerged as the primary artistic and humanistic genre of political resistance. Featuring intimate access to Navalny as he investigates his own assassination, the film provides essential context for his 2021 return to Moscow, his immediate arrest, and his February 2024 death in an Arctic penal colony. While the regime sought to physically isolate dissent, Navalny’s team and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, continue their work from European exile along with other political activists, a testament to an emerging “archipelagic identity” connecting dissidents across the global diaspora.
This screening is hosted in conjunction with the course RU325/425: "Russian Literature and Identity" and the "Islands Humanities Theme," with an introduction and post-screening discussion led by Elena Monastireva Ansdell, Associate Professor of Russian at Colby College.
WATCH TRAILER >