It is unclear whether the creators of "Nabalani: The Man Putin Failed to Kill" have scheduled for the release of the new James Bond film "No Time to Die", but either way, the documentary about the assassination attempt on Russian opposition leader Alexei Nablani has come out on top , Whether in style, whether in script development or whether in name.
"No Time to Die" could certainly have been used there for the affair of the failed assassination of the opposition, his return to life and his fight against Russian President Putin, the bad guy in the completely unimaginative plot.
Reminder: On August 20, Alexei was on a domestic flight when he suddenly felt unwell.
Very quickly his condition deteriorated, he collapsed on the floor of the plane and sank into a coma.
The pilot made a decision to make an emergency landing in the city of Omsk, while the paramedics who picked him up on the ground immediately diagnosed poisoning and injected him with atropine.
It soon became clear that these two decisions - of people who simply acted as expected from their job - saved Navalny's life.
He was rushed to a local hospital, where he was placed under the supervision of the Russian GSS.
Eventually, Navalny's colleagues would get their hands on the tests the hospital was trying to hide, which clearly show that there were remnants of poison from the Novichuk group in his body.
By the way, the three doctors who were involved in the treatment of the opposition - will die in puzzling circumstances.
The filmmakers did not touch on the doctors' deaths or concealment of documents, but made up for it with plenty of authentic footage of the crisis at Omsk Hospital, conducted interviews with Navalny's colleagues, and even revealed a phone call that convinced Putin to release Navalny to Germany.
The film goes through various stages in Navalny's life - from a blogger exposing corruption, to his nationalist episode (which always bothers to pull out to try to tattoo the rest of his struggles), through his run for mayor of Moscow, to cases sewn against him in an attempt to signal him to get off the tree.
But Navalny's story is well embedded within the larger narrative: how Russia operates a unit for political assassinations in general, and how the Kremlin or the ranks below it keep journalists, opposition politicians and various activists out of the field.
Even in this repressive landscape, Navalny's character stands out because of his uniqueness: along with his team, the oppositionist unveiled his assassination squad, dubbed one of its assassins (when impersonating a senior security official), and with these unprecedentedly embarrassed Russian security services. But more important is Navalny's conscious choice to return from Germany to Russia, to the lion's den, even though it was clear to him that he would be imprisoned. The film touches on this issue, but in my opinion it is not enough: the martyrs' choice of villains required a deeper study of its motives, acceptance and symbolism. Another point that has for some reason been spared by viewers is Putin's strange paranoia: he never mentions Nabalani, and always calls him "the citizen" or "the Berlin patient."
The man's villain employs and will employ historians and sociologists, because beyond being a tragic figure and a living legend, his story is also a reflection of the struggle of freedom and democracy against oppression and the entrenched autocracy in power;
It is a story of a heroic struggle, and perhaps from the beginning hopeless, of an infinitely brave man against a ruler who dug into power, and worked to eliminate the political opposition and prevent alternative centers of power.
Most of all, the viewer of the film can not help but realize the degree of criminality of the Russian regime in its many avenues, whose exposure to corruption was the mission of Navalny's life.
A task for which he almost paid with his life.
So "The Man Putin Could Not Kill" is not just an excellent film about Navalny himself, but a window into contemporary Russia - and an invitation to think about where government corruption could lead if not curbed in time.
"Nabalani: The man Putin failed to kill," yes Doku
