“Fire” Moscow for the Oscar award in the documentary about Navalny

Commenting on it, the Kremlin talks about the “politicization” of Hollywood Oscar award awarded to documentary “Navalni” on the case of the poisoning of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and his imprisonment after his 2021 return to Moscow.

The documentary shows the staunch Kremlin critic recovering in Germany after being poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia in 2020 and working with investigative website Bellingcat to uncover those responsible. Navalny blamed the poisoning case on a group of agents of Russia’s FSB state security service. THE Russia she denies trying to kill him.

The representative of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov stated that he has not seen the film, which won the Oscar for best documentary, but nevertheless “I dare to assume that there is clearly a certain element of politicization of the issue”. As he said, politics is not unknown in Hollywood, “but I can’t speak to any cinematic value of this film because I’m not an insider.”

It is noted that Navalny is in a high-security prison where he is serving a combined 11.5-year sentence for contempt of court and fraud, charges he claims are designed to silence him.

At the Oscars, together with the film’s Canadian director Daniel Roher, Yulia Navalnaya, wife of 46-year-old Navalny, complained that “my husband is in prison because he told the truth (…) because he defended democracy” and added: “Alexis, I dream of the day when you will regain your freedom, when our country will regain its freedom. Stay strong my love.”

For history, the documentary “Navalni”, produced by CNN Films and HBO Max, was nominated along with the documentaries “All that breathes”, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, “Fire of love” and “A House Made of Splinters.”