Navalny is an outstanding figure in many ways: approachable, telegraphic and cheerful. Or mostly relaxed, anyway: he may still sound irritable and defensive when asked about his performances on the same stage with extreme Russian nationalists about 10 years earlier, and perhaps this film could have looked more closely at events of Navalny’s early life. But the real thing that opens the eyes is the interview with the Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grosev of the Bellingcat website, who managed to impress Navalny so hard to find the perpetrators of the FSB. Groshev has to do with data: taking passenger IDs, travel documents or call records – and anything digital that leaves traces – can create an objective picture, and even retrieve passport photos of culprits. It’s pretty shocking. And Navalny’s story resonates in Britain: he survived, but Dawn Sturgess did not – the innocent British national was fatally poisoned with Novichok on British soil in 2018, as the chaotic byproduct of a riot by Russian agents trying to assassinate him. Skripal and his daughter Julia in Salisbury. For so many reasons, the story of Navalny concerns us all. Navalny hits theaters on April 12.
