In August 2020, Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader and general thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin, was taken gravely ill on a flight home to Moscow from Siberia. An emergency landing saved him; Navalny was hospitalised and treated for what turned out to be poisoning with a nerve agent. He fled to Germany to recuperate in exile, and through an undercover investigation that could have been lifted from a political thriller, he and his team gradually pieced together the facts behind the assassination attempt that nearly claimed his life.
Documentary film-maker Daniel Roher’s tenacious camera follows throughout. It’s a genuinely exciting piece of storytelling, a propulsive real-life quest for truth driven by ingenious tech-geeks and the disarming force of Navalny’s personality.
