More than four weeks into Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine, and just one week after a court sentenced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to nine years in a high-security prison, “Navalny” director Daniel Roher made a passionate plea on behalf of the jailed politician in Copenhagen, lashing out at the “murderous” regime of President Vladimir Putin and arguing that filmmakers must “pick a side” in an increasingly fractured and polarized world.
“There’s a right side of politics. And yes, filmmakers pick a side. Because you’re either on the side of morality and justice and rule of law and democracy, or you’re on the side of a murderous dictatorship that launches invasions of sovereign nations and murders children every day,” Roher said on Tuesday at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX).
The director appeared in conversation with Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, the director of the upcoming documentary “A Storm Foretold,” which follows the political spin doctor Roger Stone in the final months of the Trump administration. The animated, wide-ranging, 90-minute discussion raised questions about the responsibility documentary filmmakers have toward their subjects and the ethics of giving a platform to controversial views.
“Navalny,” which was unveiled as a last-minute “surprise” entry in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance in January, is a riveting portrait of the eponymous politician, a rousing populist who as a presidential candidate posed such a threat to Putin that he was poisoned in a botched assassination plot ordered by the Kremlin. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman described it in his Sundance review as “a must-watch documentary that tells [Navalny’s] inspiring, scary, and profoundly important story.”
For the director, who was granted unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall access to the opposition leader while he was holed up in Germany in 2020, trying to unravel the murder plot against him, the importance of the historical moment animated his approach to the film.
“This was one shot I had to interview [Navalny],” Roher said. “The possibility and likelihood that this was his last interview was on my mind, and we didn’t know what would happen. We didn’t know if he would be killed. We didn’t know if he’d be sentenced to prison for the rest of his life. But that question was very real.”
“Navalny” unfolds as a pulse-pounding political thriller, drawing on abundant news footage of the telegenic and charismatic opposition figure, as well as the digital footprint of a social-media savant whose YouTube and TikTok videos have collectively racked up tens of millions of views. Set alongside that is a breathless narrative that finds Navalny, his inner circle, and Bulgarian journalist hacker Christo Grozev – a member of the open-source research group Bellingcat – racing to uncover the identities of the men who poisoned Navalny with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok on a trip to Siberia.
One of the challenges Roher faced was how to honestly and accurately portray a shrewd protagonist he called a “social media genius.” “There [was] an awareness that I am making a film about a politician who’s not just any politician, but a politician made for the 21st century,” he said. “Everything he’s doing is a political calculation, including having a filmmaker follow him around with the camera.”
Guldbrandsen faced a similar predicament when following Stone, who he described as the “midwife” of the “Stop the Steal” movement that led to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. “He’s very easy to be around. But it’s not an ease that comes from friendship. It’s mutual exploitation. I’m there for a purpose. He’s there for a purpose,” said the director.
The Dane admitted there was almost a universal consensus that Stone is “a bad guy,” but he cautioned against any attempt to portray the vilified political operative as a “cardboard cutout.”
“You can argue that his role in American democracy has been very destructive. But I think it’s an enormous privilege to try and look at it without condemning it,” he said. “I think there’s a tendency, especially in documentaries, to be…too black and white.” Detailing how that even-handed philosophy impacted his approach to filming “A Storm Foretold,” Guldbrandsen added: “I’m there to document what’s going on. I’m not there to preach.”
Roher pushed back, asking whether Guldbrandsen was “providing a platform and a pedestal for some of these ideas” by acting as an impartial observer.
“I don’t buy into the platforming theory,” said the Dane, adding: “I think sunlight is the best disinfectant if you want to go that way. And I think that whole de-platforming approach and cancel culture, I think it’s ignorant.”
In the weeks since the buzzy Sundance premiere of “Navalny,” the Russian propaganda machine has done its best to cancel both the opposition leader and the director. State media have already paraded the filmmakers over the airwaves, said Roher, accusing them of being CIA operatives, pornographers, and enemies of the state – what the director described as “all of these scary, but also hilarious and absurd, claims.”
He nevertheless remains committed to “mak[ing] every effort to show this film in Russia” and anticipates a “blitzkrieg” of attention as CNN Films and HBO Max ramp up the international rollout of “Navalny.”
The timing, he added, could not be more urgent. “I think that in this moment, as we’re watching these egregious, horrifying images which are proliferating from Ukraine, what the world needs to be reminded of is that not all Russian people are in favor of this horrible war,” he said. “And if we pivot our energy toward a hatred or distrust of Russians, that is incredibly damaging. I hope that in this incredible darkness, the story of Navalny and his character can be a light.”