the documentary “Navalny”, awarded the Oscars in 2023, broadcast on France 5

“If they assassinate you, if they succeed, what message would you like to leave to the Russian people?” This question, asked to Alexeï Navalny as a preamble to the documentary that Daniel Roher dedicated to the Russian opponent in 2022, today takes on another dimension. Just like the person’s response: “No, that’s not possible, it’s like you’re making a documentary film about my death.” Since February 16, the day of Alexeï Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a nineteen-year prison sentence for “extremism”, these words resonate dramatically.

Navalny, by Canadian Daniel Roher, Oscar for best documentary in 2023, is broadcast on France 5, Sunday March 17 at 9:05 p.m. It describes the political rise of Alexeï Navalny, his fight against Vladimir Putin, but also the assassination attempt with a chemical agent produced by the Russian army which the opponent barely survived in 2020. The film also reveals the details of the plot involving the Russian president and images of the day Navalny was poisoned, as well as the determination of his wife.

Feeling unwell during a flight

In August 2020, while Alexeï Navalny took a flight to Tomsk, in Siberia, to return home to Moscow, he felt unwell in the passenger compartment. He was quickly hospitalized in serious condition and plunged into an artificial coma. The incident was immediately publicized, and it was under the cameras that his wife, Yulia Navalnaïa, rushed to his bedside. But, at the hospital, she is forbidden to see him. She suspects, without certainty, an assassination attempt, and fears for her husband’s life within the hospital itself. “We demand the immediate release of Alexei, because as I speak to you, there are more police and government agents present in this hospital than doctors,” Yulia Navalnaïa then declared in front of witnesses.

“As Alexei was all alone [à l’hôpital]I figured the FSB and Putin were going to take advantage of the situation and do everything in their power to make sure he died.”

Yulia Navalnaya

In “Navalny”

Russian doctors strongly declare that no toxic substance is present in Alexeï Navalny’s body. “Judging from the fact that no poison was found in his blood or other body fluids, we came to the conclusion that he is suffering… from a drop in sugar levels in the blood”, said, at the time, Alexander Murakhovsky, the head doctor of emergency at Tomsk hospital. Various Russian media, supported by the Kremlin, also relay more or less fanciful causes for the malaise of Putin’s enemy: taking hallucinogenic drugs, illegal American antidepressants, or even consumption of adulterated alcohol or cocaine.

Novichok poisoning

Yulia Navalnaïa is increasingly convinced that her husband was poisoned. The authorities and doctors eventually agreed to allow her to see her husband. “I knew all these people were lying to me, and I had to do everything in my power to get him out of there,” she confides in the documentary. The international community is closely following this affair, to the point that the German Chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, declared that she was ready to welcome Alexeï Navalny so that he could be treated. But Russian doctors are opposed to his transfer due to his state of health. “We believe the transfer was refused to give the poison time to disappear from Alexei’s body,” supports the opponent’s wife during a press conference in front of the hospital.

Shortly afterwards, doctors agreed that Alexeï Navalny should be hospitalized in Berlin. German practitioners confirm that he was indeed poisoned with Novichok, a toxic agent implicated in attacks against other opponents of the Russian government. A thesis that Vladimir Putin has always denied.

The documentary Navalny, directed by Daniel Roher, is broadcast March 17 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5 and on the france.tv platform