‘Navalny’ Wins Oscar for Best Documentary and His Wife Issues Message of Defiance

“Navalny,” a movie that adopted the imprisoned Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny as he investigated his personal near-fatal poisoning in 2020, gained the Oscar for greatest documentary function on Sunday, with Mr. Navalny’s spouse and daughter showing onstage to ship a message of defiance.

Accepting the award, the Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher spoke out in opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and stated he was there “because Aleksei Navalny right now is languishing in a gulag six and a half hours outside of Moscow, and I want to remind the world that he is there.”

He then handed the microphone to Mr. Navalny’s spouse, Yulia Navalnaya.

“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth,” she stated. “My husband is in prison just for defending democracy.”

Ms. Navalnaya continued, instantly addressing Mr. Navalny: “I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”

The give attention to Mr. Navalny got here throughout Hollywood’s most high-profile annual occasion, with final 12 months’s telecast attracting 15.4 million viewers. The different member of the family to seem on the awards ceremony, Mr. Navalny’s 21-year-old daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, informed the Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in February that she noticed the documentary as a “‘get out of death’ card,” in that worldwide attention to his plight would scale back the chance of him being killed in jail.

The documentary, which was an NYT Critic’s Pick, debuted on the Sundance Film Festival in January 2022. That February, Mr. Putin started his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In March, a Russian courtroom sentenced Mr. Navalny to 9 years in a high-security jail on prices of embezzling donations from supporters; he had already been in jail on separate prices of violating the phrases of his parole from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Europe’s prime human rights courtroom dominated that his quite a few arrests between 2012 and 2014 have been politically motivated.

Both sentences have been internationally seen as efforts to maintain the opposition chief and one of Mr. Putin’s most distinguished critics, one who had been seen as a world image of resistance to Mr. Putin, behind bars.

Mr. Navalny stated in November that he had been transferred completely to solitary confinement, limiting his interplay with the skin world.

In the movie “Navalny,” the dissident extracted a recorded confession from a person he had suspected was concerned within the August 2020 poisoning. White House officers stated American intelligence businesses concluded that Russian safety police brokers poisoned Mr. Navalny. There is substantial proof that the Kremlin was accountable for the assault.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, stated Monday that awarding the Oscar to “Navalny” confirmed “an element of politicization,” in keeping with Russia’s state information company, Tass. Mr. Peskov stated he had not seen the movie.