“Navalny,” a film about the poisoning and imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in the early hours of Monday morning.
Navalny’s two children and his wife Yulia attended the ceremony in Los Angeles, and joined the movie’s director on stage to accept the award.
“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth, my husband is in prison just for defending democracy,” Yulia Navalnaya said. “Alexei, I am dreaming about the day you will be free, and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”
A longtime critic and political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny, 46, currently languishes in a maximum-security prison about 120 kilometers east of Moscow.
He was arrested upon returning to the Russian capital in January 2021, after spending five months in a German hospital to treat a suspected Kremlin-sanctioned nerve agent poisoning. The Russian government has denied any involvement in the poisoning.
Navalny was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison by a Russian court for allegedly violating the conditions of his parole. In March 2022, he was then given another nine-year sentence on fraud charges.
The documentary follows Navalny’s political rise to become Putin’s most-prominent opposition, and documents an investigation by investigative outlet Bellingcat into his poisoning, as well as his subsequent imprisonment.
In his acceptance speech, director Daniel Roher dedicated the award to Navalny and “all political prisoners around the world.”
“Alexei, the world has not forgotten your vital message to us all,” Roher said. “We cannot, we must not be afraid to oppose dictators and authoritarianism wherever it rears its head.”
