The movie "Navalnyi" received the "Oscar" for best documentary film
The documentary "Navalnyi", about the poisoning that nearly killed Alexei Navalnyi, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, and his detention upon his return to Moscow in 2021, won the Oscar for best feature documentary on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Joining director Daniel Roher on stage, Navalnyi's wife Yulia said, "My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I dream of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love. Thank you."
The CNN documentary Films/HBO Max follows Navalnyi as he recovers in Germany after being poisoned in Siberia with a Soviet-era nerve toxin that Western nations have said was an assassination attempt on the Russian state to silence President Vladimir Putin's critic. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
In the documentary, Navalny collaborates with the investigative news publication Bellingcat and they expose FSB agents sent to poison Navalny in 2020.
Navalnyi, pretending to be a Russian official, calls one of the agents who describes the poisoning plot.
He decides to return to Russia in January 2021 with Yulia, and crowds of supporters await him. He is arrested at the airport and subsequently sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison in two separate fraud cases, which he says were fabricated to silence him.
His anti-corruption organisation was banned and declared extremist.
"Alexei, the world has not forgotten your vital message to us all. We must not be afraid to oppose dictators and authoritarianism wherever they raise their heads," Roher said at the award ceremony, with Navalnyi's wife, daughter and son behind him.
Navalnyi, 46, is the best-known of Russia's few remaining opposition voices and is serving his sentence in a maximum-security penal colony in Russia. Supporters say his health has deteriorated after about 12 periods of solitary confinement.
After an unsuccessful appeal in May against one of his sentences, Navalnyi branded Putin a convicted madman who started a "stupid war" against Ukraine, killing innocent people in both Ukraine and Russia.
At the end of the film, Navalnyi is asked what his message to the Russian people would be if he were killed.
"Never give up," he replies.
