A version of this interview with “Navalny” director Daniel Roher first appeared in the Editing Guilds & Critics Awards / Documentaries from TheWrap Awards Magazine.
In “Navalny,” director Daniel Roher follows charismatic Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as he convalesces in Germany after being poisoned in 2020 with a Soviet-era nerve agent. The HBO Max film, which plays out like a thriller, chronicles how Navalny, who shares his anti-authoritarian message almost entirely through social media, and a team of investigators discover who was behind the assassination attempt.
The documentary also explores why Navalny was determined to return to Russia in 2021, where he was promptly arrested. He is now serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony known for prisoner abuse. We sat down with Roher to talk about the making of the film.
Alexei Navalny is a talented politician and extremely media-savvy, which presents certain challenges for you as a filmmaker. In the opening scene, he even tells you what kind of movie the documentary should be.
The metanarrative of the film is this conflict between the subject and the filmmaker. Who directs whom? What agency does the subject have? What controls does the director have? And that’s a tension that we try to thread throughout the entire film. There are several points where Navalny tells me what he wants, but ultimately this is our movie, we are in control and we are making the movie we want to make. At the end of the film, we return to the starting point, when Navalny gives me the direction to make a thriller. And the movie ends with me donation to the the last direction of the film.
Of course, I have to ask about the bombshell of a scene when Navalny calls scientist Konstantin Kudryavtsev and, posing as a high-ranking Kremlin official, gets him to explain how he and a Kremlin-backed network poisoned Navalny. You don’t speak Russian, but the electricity in the room must have been amazing.
It was extraordinary, perhaps the most extraordinary moment of my life. I was in chamber B with very little expectation that anything would actually manifest that morning. It looked like another of Navalny’s schemes: a stunt, political theater, perhaps.
And I remember the moment I saw Maria Pevchikh, the lead investigator at Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation: I saw her jaw unhinged and hit the ground. And that moment is in the movie. The way she felt watching that scene was very similar to how she felt having been in the room. you used the word electricity and that’s what I felt: a volt of electricity ran up and down my spine. It is the most extraordinary thing I will film in my life.
An ominous shadow hangs over your film because it’s clear from the start that Navalny’s future in his homeland is bleak: prison or death. Was it that other tension, dealing with the reality that as he boards the plane back to Moscow, he’s headed for something horrible?
Well, first of all, I want to talk about the relationship I had with Alexei. He was very friendly, very cordial, but there was a clear delineation of the limits. Of course, you forge a relationship with this guy. It’s hard not to like it. And to understand that he’s essentially sacrificing himself for this cause that’s bigger than him and to see him return to Russia into an uncertain, but admittedly bleak future, is really hard. The understanding that this guy I care about, who I think is good for the world and good for the future of Russia, whose impact on history, I think, has gone unfulfilled, as he sits in a gulag and languishes, where his human rights are being deprived, where you are essentially being tortured, that is very, very challenging. And it’s very, very sad to know that he has never seen our movie and he may never see our movie.
Have you kept in touch with him? Is it possible to keep in touch with him?
It is not. About two or three months ago, his attorney-client privilege was revoked. All prisoners in the Russian penal system are entitled to attorney-client privilege, except Alexei Navalny. He can no longer communicate privately with his legal team. And that means his lifeline to the world is severed, severed. Many analysts have suggested that this is a necessary precondition for Navalny to be assassinated or killed while he is in custody. We have to hope that doesn’t happen. But it certainly is scary and the world should be paying attention and taking notice.
Have you been in contact with his family?
I have been in contact with his family. I think he has limited contact with his family. But the visits from his wife and his mother and their daughter and his son have been, I think, restricted or completely remote. So they’re doing everything they can to break his spirit. But this is a man whose spirit is forged in iron and steel, and the alloy that makes up his character is very strong. And I hope that he not only survives this ordeal, but that one day he can get out of prison and leave his mark on the history of his country, which I hope will be a brighter day and a new direction for Russia’s future. .
Read more from the Guilds & Critics / Documentary Awards edition here.
