This year’s Academy Award race for Best Documentary Feature is as exciting as it’s ever been, and not just because award season pundits are struggling to determine which of the excellent nominees will end up taking home a trophy at the end of the ceremony. This year, the films selected tell fascinating stories that create icons out of their star subjects. All The Beauty and the Bloodshed shows the unflinching resolve of artistic activist resisting the Sackler family, Fire of Love is a haunting love story of two ambitious volcanologists, All That Breathes shines a spotlight on a pair of Indian brothers affected by climate change, and A House Made Of Splinters explores the innocent children of Ukraine whose childhoods are thrust into torment. However, none of these films were quite as astonishing as the one nominee that pulled the most shocking and consequential prank in film history.

No, it’s not Jackass Forever. The HBO documentary Navalny explores the rise of the charismatic Russian politician Alexei Navalny, who became the first legitimate opposition candidate to stand up against President Vladimir Putin and call out his government for their egregious crimes. Director Daniel Roher and his crew get incredible footage of Navalny’s efforts, as he admits in a pre-recorded video that he may not survive to see the documentary released. While the existing propaganda machine that Putin’s government used to take down Navalny was certainly haunting to watch in detail, nothing ended up being more gamechanging than a pivotal phone call that confirmed a legitimate conspiracy.

Over the course of the film, Navalny travels across dangerous regions of the country, knowing that his life will be in danger if he continues on his current trajectory. After a near fatal poisoning that Putin’s spies are clearly responsible for, Navalny and the documentary crew settle on a much more difficult task: proving it. Perhaps, undeniable evidence that Putin was directly involved in the crime would draw more attention to Navalny’s cause, as he had already inspired a strong following on social media platforms. However, Roher and Navalny are genuinely gobsmacked when their crazy plan to contact the potential assassins ends up revealing much more than they ever expected in an absolutely jaw-dropping twist.

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In August of 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent during a flight to the capital city of Moscow to raise awareness for his campaign. He shockingly falls ill in the midst of this pivotal moment in his campaign, and is forced to undergo a serious medical procedure at a Russian hospital in Omsk. One of the more haunting aspects of the film is how it shows the deep level of corruption that all of Russia’s institutions share. Fearing that his life is in more danger if he’s kept in a government facility, Navalny’s family decides to move him to a safer hospital in Berlin, Germany, where the ethics of the medical staff can be ensured.

One of the brilliant things about Navalny that makes it such an entertaining film is seeing how constantly willing to risk his own life the heroic subject is. Navalny realizes that this poisoning suggests that he’s gained Putin’s attention, and that he’s now considered to be a serious threat. He receives confirmation from five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that he was poisoned, and directly blames Putin for the crime on his social platforms. Of course, the Kremlin denies his involvement, meaning that Navalny and Roher needed to go a little deeper to seal their argument.

Alexei Navalny making the shocking call to the man who tried to poison him while a shocked woman records him in Navalny documentary
Image via Warner Bros.

With the help of the Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev and Anti-Corruption Foundation head investigator Maria Pevchikh, Navalny’s team manages to identify some of the potential assassins and attempts to bridge contact. After intensely monitoring flight records, analyzing metadata, and searching for potential suspects linked to Putin’s inner circle, the team identifies a military chemist named Konstantin Kudryavtsev as the man responsible for dispensing the potentially fatal dosage that nearly killed Navalny. The entire sequence plays like something out of Zodiac, except it’s all real.

The most shocking moment that becomes the film’s climax is the phone call itself; Navalny calls his would-be assassin under the guise "Maxim Ustinov,” who is supposedly an aide to the Russian security council Patrushev. Even though he used a spoofing app that would trace the call back to a landline Russian agents used during the events, surely Kudryavtsev would recognize Navalny’s voice, right? Wrong. In a shockingly frank moment, Navalny gets Kudryavtsev to go into detail on the plot, how the poison was administered, the direct connection to Russian spy networks, and how he failed in his operation. The look of utter shock by the entire team of journalists, filmmakers, and Navalny’s family as the call goes on is one of the most raw, emotional reactions ever captured on film.

The Aftermath of the Events in 'Navalny'

Alexei Navalny getting interviewed by multiple reporters in Navalny documentary
Image via Warner Bros.

What’s most impressive about Navalny is that it’s already in need of an update; since the film’s premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the events in Ukraine have turned a global eye towards the Russian government. The film ends with Navalny’s risky return to his home country, where he’s detained on ridiculous accusations of violating parole conditions. Two months after the documentary became an audience favorite at Sundance, Navalny himself was imprisoned for 9 years after the Russian courts found him guilty of contempt of court and embezzlement. Despite protests by Russian doctors that Navalny was being “abused” and struggling from a medical situation, in January 2023 he was assigned a stricter form of punishment with solitary confinement.

The real impact of Navalny surpasses any prizes that the Oscars could bestow to it; even if the film does not win the Best Documentary Feature prize, it has unquestionably raised awareness of Navalny’s position and opened up the eyes of American viewers to get them more engaged in the Russian political scene. It’s a thoroughly entertaining film with twists and turns in which we literally get to walk within the main character’s shoes. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we want every movie to be?