Alexei Navalny appears in a scene from the documentary Navalny.Warner Bros. Pictures via AP
As can happen, this year’s nominees for best documentary at the Academy Awards are a disparate bunch. Films about the opioid crisis, orphans in war-torn Ukraine, the birds of New Delhi and volcanologists are all present. But only one doc, Canadian director Daniel Roher’s Navalny, has raised the ire of Vladimir Putin.
Following the rise of Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader who was poisoned by Kremlin conspirators in 2020, Roher’s film features extensive interview footage with the anti-corruption activist as he battled for the hearts and minds of Russia. The nerve-rattling film allowed Roher to get up close and personal with Navalny, to the point that filming on the project ended just when its subject decided to return home to Moscow in January, 2021, which is when he was immediately arrested and imprisoned.
Ahead of next month’s Oscars ceremony, The Globe and Mail caught up with the Toronto-born Roher to discuss balancing success with guilt, and his hopes for what might be next.
How are you feeling now that the news of the Oscar nomination has settled in?
It’s been a surreal time. For me, it’s a gigantic relief, because before he went back to Moscow, Navalny asked me to get the film nominated for an Oscar. I said, Alexey, I can’t promise you I’ll do that, but I will work as hard as I can to try. And that’s what I did. To have accomplished that mission, to bring attention to his plight and mission, that’s why this honour is so meaningful. Somewhere in a very cold, very dark solitary-confinement cell, Navalny received good news.
So he knows about the nomination?
His lawyers are able to speak with him once every week or two, yes. But their interactions are very weird. They have to see him through this opaque glass wall, so they can’t really see his face, just his form. And they don’t have attorney-client privilege there, so it’s hard to confer with one another. But he does know. He’s in a challenging spot, his survival is in question. He’s in greater peril now than the two years he’s already been in prison. The authorities there weaponize other prisoners as biological agents to go in and infect him with COVID or tuberculosis. They could murder him at any moment. But for him, his family, this was a meaningful honour, and he’s very grateful.
When we spoke last year, you said that your life has been a continuing whirlwind. Are things still so intense?
It’s been an overwhelming expansion of my universe. But it’s been very bittersweet. Personal success, career success, all of these things that I’m experiencing are predicated on a man being enclosed in a small jail cell. I’ve felt a great deal of guilt. But I knew he was going to go back to Moscow no matter what I did or didn’t film, so just being able to bear witness and document history, I take solace in that.
You said last year that you didn’t live in fear, and that the Kremlin’s propaganda machine would do its thing, and that was that. Have your feelings changed as the war in Ukraine has intensified, and your film has become just that much more available to watch?
I think my risk assessment remains the same. But there is fear associated with some of my colleagues, including [Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev], who was recently added to Russia’s most-wanted list. There are plans for them to assassinate him, and that’s scary and dangerous. But it doesn’t affect his or my resolve. I take solace in what I was able to do to help Navalny.
The Oscars will take place next month just around the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine. How mixed are your feelings about that?
The Oscars, it’s glitzy and exciting, but it doesn’t really do it for me. I’m very excited and grateful for the recognition that comes with the nomination, but the pomp and circumstance of the show itself ... for a lot of other people, it would be a lot more exciting. I’m getting married two weeks after the Oscars, so I’m much more looking forward to that.
Between touring this film all over the world and advocating for Navalny’s cause, have you had time to think about what project might be next?
I’ve been able to spend a great deal of time working on my next film, but I can’t talk too much about these things while it’s in utero. It is completely different from Navalny, and like nothing that I’ve ever done before. One thing that my friend Brett Morgen’s film about David Bowie, Moonage Daydream, taught me is that in order to stay inspired as an artist you have to switch it up and be outside of your comfort zone all the time. I took that cue as I was dreaming up my next project.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Navalny is available now to stream on Crave.