Imprisoned Alexei Navalny Learns Documentary About Him Wins Oscar
14.03.2023 - 01:49
/ etcanada.com
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny learned Monday from his lawyer that a film detailing his poisoning and political activism won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
The 46-year-old politician was attending a court hearing via video link from the prison when his attorney broke the news to him about the documentary, “Navalny”, by director Daniel Roher, according to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. She called it “the most remarkable announcement of an (Oscar) win in history.”
Yarmysh did not report what Navalny’s initial reaction was to the Oscar win.
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According to Yarmysh, Navalny faced a court hearing in Kovrov, a town near the prison in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic participated in the hearing on a complaint he filed against Russian penitentiary officials.
At a daily conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the Oscar win, saying that he hasn’t seen the film and thus “it wouldn’t make sense to say anything” about it. He added that “Hollywood sometimes does not shun politicizing its work.”
Russian state TV channels largely ignored the win.
Monday’s hearing was on one of the many lawsuits the defiant Navalny has filed against prison administrators over what he alleges are violations of his rights. Two more hearings were scheduled, but those were postponed until later dates.
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The documentary portrays Navalny’s career of fighting official corruption, his near-fatal poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 that he blames on the