April 19, 2022 • 42 mins
Canadian documentary film director Daniel Roher is known for his 2019 film Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, which features the elite of rock and roll, including Springsteen and Clapton. Bulgarian investigative journalist Christov Grozev is the lead Russia investigator with Bellingcat, an open-source journalism group. The two collaborated on the documentary “Navalny,” which was directed by Roher and has received widespread acclaim from critics and moviegoers. The gripping real-life thriller took home the Festival Favorite and U.S. Documentary Audience Awards at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. “Navanly” follows Russian opposition leader and outspoken Putin critic Alexei Navany in the wake of his 2020 poisoning as he works to uncover those responsible for the assassination attempt. Roher and Grozev spoke with Alec about Navalny’s potential path to the presidency, why poison is the Kremlin’s weapon of choice and what might be next for Putin.
“Navalny” is currently in theaters worldwide and will premiere on CNN TV in North America on April 24th.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. When Russian opposition leader and
fierce Putin critic Alexey Navalny fell violently ill on a
flight in August of two twenty, it was suspected he
was poisoned by Novachuk, a Soviet era nerve agent. He
(00:24):
was medically evacuated to Berlin and fell into a coma,
but miraculously survived. My guests today, filmmaker Daniel Roar and
investigative journalist Christo Grotzev, were at the center of the
unfolding drama that resulted in the gripping documentary naval Me.
The film documents the quest to identify those responsible for
(00:49):
the poisoning and the plight of Alexey Navalny, whose anti
corruption platform landed him in a Russian prison where he
remains to this day. More poisoned. Putn't supposed to be
not so stupid to use this navy chalk. If you
want to kill someone, just shoot him. Jesus christ, It's
(01:09):
impossible to believe it. It's kind of stupid. The whole
idea of poisoning with a chemical weapon. What the fuck.
This is why this is so smart, because even reasonable people,
they refused to believe like what come on poisoned seriously.
(01:30):
Prior to Navalny, Daniel Roar directed the feature documentary Once
We're Brothers Robbie Robertson and the Band about the rock group.
He also shot and directed several short docks and has
been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards. Roar has been
developing his craft since a young age. He spent a
(01:53):
year at scared the Savannah College of Art and Design,
but found his passion in a high school film class
at the Tobaco School of the Arts in Toronto. We
had this fabulous film teacher. He was like a sort
of coromogene e cool nice guy and he was very
same Mr Johnson Kevin, and uh I was. He had
(02:14):
this film class, and so I had a little cohort
of film friends. We called ourselves the Man Clan, and
the joke was we were not manly at all. We
were a bunch of film nerds and we would just
This was when DSLRs became a thing, So about ten
years ago or fifteen years ago, you could buy a
little DSLR for seven or eight hundred dollars and you
could get a shallow depth of field, an image that
(02:37):
looked like a movie. And to me, at seventeen years old,
that was revelatory. And so my friends we'd run around Toronto.
We we once had the subway system shut down by
accident setting off smoke alarms. My dad still gives me
a hard time for the time I set off the
smoke alarm in his house when we were seventeen or eighteen.
But being creative, making movies, making things, and it all
(02:57):
started for me in in a tobacoa fabulous school that
I was able to attend when I was a teenager.
And when you went to SCAD because I love SCAT
and SCATS like a lot of these schools who over
the arc of my lifetime, you know, many decades now
they have you know, raised the money and grown so significantly.
And uh, you know SCAD, when you go down there
to Savannah, they've taken over half the town. You know,
(03:19):
every available building they bought and have incorporated into that program.
And you went there for just one year and not
even a full year. I went there for about a year. Um,
I was in Savannah for one year and amazing place,
super cool talent. I'm not a school guy, and it
has nothing to do with that school. It's just that
no matter what Kevin Johnson imparted to you know, you
(03:41):
were done. I was finished. Kevin Johnson mic drop. That
was it with keV. That that was it. I learned
everything you needed to know from Kevin. From Kev's film class. Mr.
Johnson's film class, I learned everything I needed to know.
And I decided that I wanted to make documentaries and
the best way to do that would be to just
make documentary. Why documentaries? Documentaries where this art form that
(04:01):
for me existed at the confluence of all these things
I was interested in. I was very curious about traveling
and seeing the world in history and art and culture
and filmmaking, cinematography, editing, but also music and drawing, animation, painting.
For your parents in the arts they had, they were
in retail, the Schmata business. My mom and dad had
a clothing store called Higher Ground and Higher Ground for
(04:22):
Kids in Toronto for about thirty thirty five years, and
so my dad sold out aware like North Faced Patagonia, Archaracs, Canada,
Goose and so we were always the spirit of travel
was something that we was always imparted onto. My brother
and I would go on canoe trips in Algonquin Park
as as as teenagers and as kids, and so I
always had the sense of traveling and getting out into
(04:43):
the world was something really important and valuable. And and
my dad has a bunch of corny phrases that he
always says that are just foundational to my life, and
one of them is travel off the beaten path. And
certainly that's the choice I chose when I dropped out
of school and tried to pursue other things. Now the
film is out. The film is going to be released
in eight cinemas around the US on April eleven and twelve.
(05:05):
And this is obviously extraordinarily exciting for all of us.
That's a lot of screens for a doc and and
certainly Warner Brothers, who were so grateful is distributing the film,
understands the critical mission of getting this film out now
as quickly as possible. When did you first become aware
of navalmy I've been aware of NAVALNY for a few
years now, just because I'm I'm interested in Russia and
(05:26):
Russian politics and geopolitics is something that I'm interested in
and and if you're in the West and you're interest
in Russia and Navalny's name is unavoidable. But certainly my
interest in him peaked in the summer of when news
circled around the world that he had been poisoned. And
I remember vividly this three day struggle when he was
in this hospital in Siberia and the authorities weren't letting
(05:47):
him leave, and there was this weird behavior happening, and
something strange was going on, a weird thing, that they
wouldn't let him go, they wouldn't let him go to Germany,
and eventually they did. They relented. He he was in
there a little longer. I think. I think, so sink
in or fade out. Um the German couldn't detect and
so um. That was in my consciousness. At no point
(06:10):
did it ever cross my mind at that stage that oh,
I should go make a movie about this guy. It
never would have entered my my plane of reality. Well,
it just I was sitting in Toronto painting an apartment.
I just didn't occur to me. It wasn't until I
was sitting next to this man, Crystal Grozev, who's here
with us today that I thought, oh, maybe we should
go make a film about this, Maybe we should go
(06:31):
pursue that. This is the same way with all of
even your earlier shorter films. You do the one about
sex abuse, but from the priest stuff up in the
indigenous people's prolific sex offender and Canadian history. As I made,
the name of the film is Survivors, Row Survivors because
his name is Row. The man's name is Ralph Roe,
who was the Anglican minister that had this little prop
plane and he would fly up to these communities and
(06:53):
everyone adored him. He was like this this whizard missionary
fly in and everyone thought it was great. And he'd
take the kids on camp trips, but only the boys.
And it turned out that he was one of the
most insidious criminals in Canadian history. Was he abused hundreds
of thousands of boys. And so I, when I was
one or twenty two, made a short film with this
extraordinary film producer in Toronto called Peter O'Brien, and we
(07:16):
made a film about this man's crimes. Was in his
idea and he hired you two directors right when when
I was twenty one, and uh, that that film made
a little bit of noise. People saw it, and I
think it was very significant as a tool for the
community to heal and and have and have that um
but it was, you know, very challenging, and we've since
(07:37):
entered a different place in Canada. I don't know that
that's a film I would have directed now. I think
that we would be much better suited finding one of
the many indigenous filmmakers to tackle that story. But in
that moment you feel sensitive about that, well, very much,
of course, absolutely. I think now it's very important we
have to think about who gets to tell what story.
(07:59):
When I made that movie, I had no consciousness of
that That's not something that was on my radar. It
was only years later later that I reflected on it
and questioned whether or not I was the right guy
to tell that story. And the film was successful and
I think the community was appreciative that I made it.
But I think now I would I would really question that,
and I would really seek community consultation. It's complicating to
(08:20):
note that you're you know, when you talk about your
career in the brief minutes we've been talking now, you
lose sight of the fact of how young you are,
you know, so it was we we tell the audience
that you're twenty nine years old, Thank you very much.
He's go on Hollywood football now he's full flag Hollywood now,
the twenty eight year old Daniel. You don't realize that
(08:42):
you have been doing this for years now and this
inclusivity diversity thing has unfolded most vividly during those ten years,
during your career, your lifetime. Absolutely, and especially in Canada,
our consciousness about the vital necessity of which communities get
to tell which stories has has really come to the front.
It's something that I'm mindful of, as you know, a
(09:02):
Jewish kid that grew up in Toronto. It's something that
I really have to think about. My view was, you know,
it's it's the success of an individual filmmaker's career leads
them to where they are today. There's films you're making
now that people are benefiting from their learning about the world.
Documentary films can often be the beachhead for people to
understand the topic, to understand events in history beyond books
(09:25):
and beyond classroom learning. Documentaries have become tools for learning.
And I say to myself, the guy that's directing Navalny.
Let's let's be grateful for his roots and how he
got to where he has. But anyway, I'd like to
just shift for a second, because we do have our
other guests here. Crystal Grozev. You sit there and you
see that Navalny is going to come back to Moscow,
(09:48):
and you go, why why does he come back to Moscow?
Knowing he must have known what the potential was. He
seems to be being charged with embezzlement all the time,
and and and the charges dropped, and he runs from
mayor and gets the vote, which is significant but not
anything earth shattering. But he but he's got a political following.
(10:10):
I want you to take me through this line of
right before he's poisoned, where is he, what he's doing.
We're gonna try you for embezzlement, and then we suspend,
we don't do this, we don't do this, and then
we poison you. Take me through what's going on with
Putin the Russians in Navani before he's going to get poisoned. Well,
what we found out actually is that they tried to
poison him years earlier. So they started tailing him. This
(10:32):
whole unit of the Russian security service to the FSB
that comprises not only political police like the scary muscle guys,
but also chemical weapons specialists within the FSB and doctors
within the FSB. Saw a killed team, a poisoned team.
They started telling him the moment he announced his bid
for the presidency that was in two thousand seventeen, and
they tailed him on a total of sixty six trips
(10:52):
around the country throughout his whole campaign. So every little
village we visited, they were there. They stayed in hotels
near him. They usually arrived just ap of hours before
he arrived or were left just after he left. So
they were there waiting for a sign off from apparently
putting for him to be whacked, to be killed. But
this didn't come for years, or maybe it did come.
(11:12):
What they don't know is maybe they tried. But Moscow
four is the phrase that comes out in this film,
and people who see it will know that it's it's
a it's a sort of a cold word for Russia's
incompetence at the official level. So it could be that
they tried earlier to poison him but didn't work out.
So the only thing we see is that in July,
just a month and a half before the actual Coma poisoning,
(11:34):
the same team followed him and his wife to their
getaway to a Baltic coast in Russia, in the in
the Clino Gradkneberg, and apparently they tried to poison them
there again because we see his wife falling almost into
a comma because she experienceds similar symptoms to what he
did them on the wrong people eating the custard. Is
that the problem with the KGB or the FSP, Well,
(11:55):
they're just not great at poisoning. They're not they're not great,
I mean they but they try again when they have.
What they lose in competence, they make up in resilience,
So they do it. The years later, they keep trying,
They keep trying. They tried it twice on another politician
who lives here, actually Vladimir Kamos up same poison tis here.
They poisoned him there, he came back here because his
(12:15):
family lives here. He decided to go back for a
campaign trips. Six months later poisoned him again. So they tried.
They tried many times, not just once. So why that
moment in time, It's the wrong question, because maybe they
tried for four years and that was just the one
time that they made enough sort of dozeage into get
into his bloodstream by essentially smearing his underpants. That's what happened.
(12:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, I went in through him through his
lower body parts. So he goes to Berlin. He finally
gets out of there and goes to Germany to get
treated and he's cured. Navalni, as I see him on
screen and Daniel's film is crisp and sharp and alert
and bright eyed and doesn't seem impaired in anyway as
a figure in the film. And then he it's cured
(13:00):
and he comes back again. Yeah, Like, like who around
him is counseling him? Who is advising him that you
could stay here and be the leader of an opposition,
You could tour the world and be the darling of
the Western world. Very few people would command the same
resources that Navalni commanded in raising money. He could be.
It could be like the Clinton Foundation, his foundation and
(13:23):
raising money for his activities. He could be. He's very
charismatic and he could carry on his great work. Instead,
he decides to go home and they put him in
prison for night. Why does he go home? Why, Well,
you're preaching to the choir. You're asking the same questions
that I asked him, And I asked that his why?
He looked at me, like, I'm an idiot? How can
you ask this question? If I stay here, I just
become one of the many talking heads that just talk
(13:46):
to Russians from outside of Russia, and Russians would never
trust me. Russians would never believe him unless I had
partaken the daily in their daily misery. And I'm sure
that people offered him an effective and compelling argument to
the contrary. I mean, there's a lot of great work
you could do. What are you gonna be able to
accomplish from jail for nine years? And then they have
you that they're going to kill you there? Probably exactly
we got to that conversation and basically says, you're right.
(14:09):
If I were a journalist, If I were journalists, I
would stay here and continue, probably doing a better job
from here than from there. But I want to be
a politician. I want to be president one day, and
I can only do it from there, from prison. From well,
I asked him, do you realize that you're going to prison?
He says yes. I asked him, do you think it's
going to be for a couple of months. He said, no, Christo,
we don't get it. It It will be years. So he
was completely open eyed about it. And I asked his wife,
(14:31):
does she realize that this is going to happen? She
said absolutely, so, it's a different type of complex could be,
could be? But what is your opinion? Why did he
go back? I mean, I'm sure you share some of
the same opinions he does. I think fundamentally, what Alexei
was not comfortable with was the idea and notion of instructing,
(14:51):
of telling, encouraging the Russian people to take to the streets,
to go up against the regime, to risk getting arrested.
He was not comfortable saying those things, commanding those things,
encouraging those from a Parisian hotel, from a Parisian hotel,
from Ville, news from Berlin, from Vienna. If you want
to be the moral leader of a nation, which is
the role he currently occupies, talk is cheap. You have
(15:13):
to be shoulder the shoulder, and you have to be there.
And I think that what he is doing, his courage
and bravery, hopefully will be an inspiration to the Russian people.
And I think that's why he went back. But is
it something that we grapple with and struggle with to
this day. Absolutely, was it the right decision? I don't know,
but that was between Alexey Navalny and his higher power,
and that's the decision he made, and his family's lockstep
(15:33):
with him. But it's obviously something that we struggled with.
And I was like, I remember I was making the movie,
and I was hoping that we would get some sort
of uncertainty, some semblance of insecurity about the decision or
the process. The veneer of fear. The man's constitution was ironclad.
He never let on that he was afraid. He'd say, oh,
(15:55):
Daniel Jesus Christ, of course I have to go back.
What am I going to do sit in Germany? Forget it?
But I would imagine, I understand what you're saying. I mean,
I understand his commitment, but I wonder if it's going
to be easier to poison him. I mean, is he
Jeffrey Epstein. In the United States, we live in a
place where people are fatigued by scandal, they are fatigued
(16:16):
by by what I call the conspira noiak mentality. Well,
I would not be comfortable equivocating the Volni with Epstein
for obvious reason. No, no, no, But I'm saying in
terms of he's he's a sitting duck in a prison.
Get the guy in prison. If you want to whack
and put him in prison. You know where he is.
You control his movements. He is in the cutsody of
the same man who tried to murder him. Christa, what
do you think, Well, just remember that what happened to
(16:36):
the previous guys that tried to murder him. They're dead
now or one of them is most likely, right, the
guy that, yes, the guy that the ones that failed
so that they kill you. Well, basically they said, have
you sit down with the bowl of poison? So why
would the new guys trying to say to you give
me that poison left? Do you remember the scene, the
(16:57):
Marquee scene in our film when Alexey eight makes a
few phone calls I guess an extraction of confession, Remember
that part. I don't want to ruin the film from now.
Of course, there's drama in this film, unlike any other
doc I've seen in recent memory. Well, so we know
that some of the individuals who were fooled, well, The
whole point is there was a set of FSB officers
(17:18):
who had given the task to kill Navalni. They failed,
but they lived in with the belief that their government,
their president, their crook president, will protect them from publicity,
from that publicity, from neighbors taking revenge on them. That
didn't work out. These guys that tried to kill them
are now negative celebrities. They all of Russian knows their faces.
(17:40):
Their neighbors spray painted their their elevator with like our
our neighbor is a killer. Because they were fact totals
of the because they were murderous emissaries of this government,
or because they're actual fans of Navalni or both. No,
because the neighbors actually didn't realize that the government is
a government of murderers, that their neighbors that work, they
didn't realize that there were Russians who don't realize that
(18:02):
Putin is an Ardus. Yes, we're gonna go. We're gonna
get that in a second. And I do want to
put a button on what you said. You're very right,
I did. By no means that I mean to be
equivocate Epstein with a Navalny for obvious reasons, But I'm
just saying that that seems to be the key. You
want to get somebody in prison, because then you have
complete control over where they go, what they do. There's
more opportunities to kill them. So he wants to be
(18:23):
a part of things. He's willing to suffer. He's willing
to take on the horrible consequences to come back and
one day hopefully get out of prison. Do people view
Nivalny as a viable political candidate if he wasn't in prison,
if they weren't trying to poison him all the time?
Does he have any chance to become the president of Russia?
I think he does. For years, the people who doubted
him were twofold. One of one part of Russia that
(18:46):
didn't like him were fed with propaganda deities, an embezzler,
so they just alway just a crow that just wants
to get some of the government money. And another part
thought that he is a government proxidy, that he's actually
a fake full position figure, that he's very venient for
for Putin because straw man, because it's strawman that doesn't
have a chance to get into the presidency. Therefore he's
(19:06):
an easy one. But after the poisoning and especially after
the film, and honestly, any Russian who's seen the film
sees him as a viable presidential candidate. And that's why
I think this film has a big future for changing
minds and hearts in Russia. And that's why I think
and I know that Putin is so upset with the film,
not with the investigation so much, not with Navandi so much,
(19:27):
but with the film because people who see the film
see him as a valuable candidate. What did they say,
navalni embezzled. I think they said that he stole donations
from his from his foundation. But what we have to
understand is they have a menu of stuff they just
make up, like the Russian judicial system. That what do
they accuse him? They accused him. I think there was
taking money from profit he stole. Originally they said that
(19:49):
he stole lumber and some sort of commodities, and then
he stole money from the nonprofit. It's nonsense. He and
he insulted a war veteran. That's a crime. Just weird,
wacky whatever they can come up with things. And and
he and and he was given suspended sentences for two
of these inbeztlement charges. Why why didn't they dump him
in the prison then, Well, the first time I think
(20:10):
it was in twenty during his run for mayor of Moscow.
He was sentenced to five years in prison. But the
day of his sentence, tens of thousands of people came
out to the streets in protest, and I think that
rattled the regime and they said, we cannot we don't
want to deal with So with the response in public
is uh, full throated enough. If there's a lot of
(20:31):
people out there making noise about him, I'm going to
assume then on a public relations level, Navalny is a
problem for Putin. Well, he is, But what changed with
Navalni Navanni made it the big problem for Putin. His
Putin had to take much more drastic measures after he
returned from Germany than before. He had to silence the
(20:53):
islands of free media completely. He had to crush the
people coming through the streets with force, beat old women,
drag young kids in hoards to to detention centers, and
that closed a gap, that closed the valve. But but
it actually allows the pressure to increase now because these
people can go to the streets, but they have it
(21:14):
inside them that this anger, so it's a problem for
put in Daniel Roar and Crystal grot Sev. The subject
of another Daniel Roar documentary was Robbie Robertson. Robertson was
also a guest on Here's the Thing. Check out our
episode with the legendary musician. We ended up recording the
(21:38):
basement tapes. I don't know, there's something like a hundred
and forty songs or something in the course of this.
And what we would do is every day we would
go to Big Pink, We'd have some coffee, play some checkers.
Bob would write. He wrote on a typewriter, so he
would type something up. We'd go down into the basement,
(21:58):
grab everybody, grab whatever instrument was close. Might even not
be the one you play anything. Because there was no rules.
We'd sit on we'd mess around, play through a tune
and we'd say, wow, that felt kind of good to hear.
More of my conversation with Robbie Robertson go to Here's
(22:20):
the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel Roar and
Crystal Grote tell the story of how they convinced Alexei
Navalny to allow his life to be filmed. I'm Alec
(22:40):
Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. The documentary
film Navalny was shot prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And while there is no shortage of condemnations to be
leveled against the Kremlin, I wanted to know what they
feel is the most significant criticism of Vladimir Poo and
his regime. Well, it's corruption. It's really corruption. The one
(23:04):
keyword that everybody in the understands is a driving away
value from their daily life. They see the wealth of
the elite that has nothing to do with with what
a normal Western elite would have, and then a elite
for people to understand in the timeline that elite began
to accrue on a more concentrated level. Since when that's recent,
(23:26):
isn't it in the last twenty years. Well, there's always
been people who profit it from not like in this country,
from war profit here, etcetera. But but but it seems
to me like there's an oligarchical suffice here that's bigger. Now.
Suffice it to say that the oldigarchicle layer our buddhis
school Buddhis and Judo Buddhis and like college buds of Putin,
so they came through him. They're actually holding does increased
(23:46):
dramatically during Putin's really absolutely I think before that you
didn't have as much of this. Well we had a
couple of oligarchs and some of them, but not like now. Yes,
so that that is the one criticism that is exploited
by somebody like like Navali because it's easy to point
out than as visible. And one of all the would
say if you were here is that every single issue
in Russia, it's it's foundation is in corruption, and if
(24:09):
we can tackle corruption, we can start to heal the society.
But out there's one thing I want to speak to Earlier,
you asked Christo quite a pointed question, and that's whether
or not Alexey actually has a reasonable chance of ever
becoming president. And one thing I asked him the same question.
I was like, dude, are you like delusional? Like how
how is this actually gonna happen? And what he spoke
to was the Moscow mayoral race and why that is
(24:31):
an interesting case study is because he started that race
with two percent of the vote. People didn't like them.
They caricatured him as just a blogger, and some wacky
Internet guy, and he finished with of the vote. It
wasn't a fair election. There was malfeasance. He narrowly avoided
a runoff, and I think the Kremlin, who let him
run an election, was so nervous about his performance. He
(24:54):
ran an American style campaign. He was kissing babies, knocking
on doors in the subways, distributing literature, tens of thousands
of volunteers. There has never been a political organization in
Russia like that. They were afraid. I don't know if
the guy will be president, but what I hope, at
the very least is that he will have the chance
to compete in the democratic election. Whether the Russian people
(25:15):
elect him is up to their own agency, is up
to the Russian electorate. I just hope, I dream for
a future he can run in this country. You have
people who voted for a candidate in two thousand and
sixteen and again in two thousand and twenty. Who does
what a lot of conservatives do, which is they give
them a lot of predigested pablem about what the conditions
(25:36):
are in this country. You know, that's what Fox News is.
There's people that need their news pre digested. Is it
the same in Putin's Russia. Is it like America? Meaning
does this Putin enjoy the support like Trump of a
massive number of poorly informed people. These are the lazy, informational,
(25:57):
lazy people. They they are fine, which is getting their
news from late night State TV, which is the equivalent
of Fox here, which is pre masticated, pre pre chewed,
and they don't have time, patients, or interest in getting more.
This would be about sixty percent of the population. Another
would be the people who always doubted everything and would
consider both sides to any debate to be bad guys,
(26:19):
because in Russia, that's how they grew up, being disappointed
by the political elite through through centuries and then or
the younger guys who are actually interested in information actively.
What changed with the Navali poisoning and the protests after
that is that this there was the disinterested. They actually
became interested and they figured out finally that Putting is
(26:41):
the bad guy here. But they were afraid to go
out to the streets. So that but that's still progress,
because that doesn't make them uninformed. They just made them
makes them afraid. But the one other thing I want
to speak to, which is piggy back and alf of
what Crystal just said. I think it's true that a
large majority of the country is being spoon fed this
state media, but I don't think it is totally the
agency of the people. It's like there's literally a vacuum
(27:04):
of information. It's impossible to obtain if you're living in
the middle of the country, if you're not saving and
so absolutely, it's a totally different dynamics, a different dichotomy,
and it just really needs to be understood that in
Russia you cannot access other points of view, other information
unless you're a super savvy person who knows how to
(27:25):
use VPNs and who knows how to get around censorship.
I disagree with it because even before this censorship was introduced,
there were islands of free media there. You could get
to Twitter, you could get to Facebook. People are just
too lazy. The six people just don't want to do that.
I want to note for our listeners, this is the
first moment where Daniel and Questa are in disagreement. Let's
(27:47):
mark this in the script. But this is what we
always dream of on these shows. Now, how did you first?
I mean, you investigated the poisoning and you did a
lot of work writing about it and exposing the poisoning, correct,
you know, without giving a company's secrets if you will,
and proprietary information. How do you go about that? Like,
how does that begin? How did how did that begin?
For you describe in vague terms when you start calling
(28:09):
it never starts with that investigation. It always starts with
a previous investigation that you've learned something that you keep
it at the back of your mind and it comes
handed later. So what happened in this case? We investigated
the poisoning of remember the Scriptles, the former Russian double
spy who went to to the UK and the Russian
military intelligence tried to poison him with Novi schock in
(28:30):
Salisbury in two thousand eighteen. So we had investigated this,
we had cracked this crime. We found out where the
poisoners had taken their physical poison, their Novi chock, and
this turned out to be a particular institution in Russia.
And we're not giving too much away, but it's a
lab that we discovered and presumed is giving poison to
anybody who needs it, like any government agency who's who
wants to kill somebody gets the poison from there. So
(28:52):
we decided to trace those guys from that institute, from
that lab and see with whom they talked in the
days before Navalny was poison And that's how we find
and how do you find that? Well, that's the beauty
of this crazy Russian corrupt system. Because Russia is corrupt
and dictatorial. The government wants to have information on anybody
at any given time, so they gather all this information
(29:14):
on you, and that informations for saying that information is
for sale because it's corb because Putin cannot survive if
it doesn't allow his FSB under links to actually make
money on on selling whatever. Some of them are vulnerable,
some of them are probably like you exactly. They usually
sell this to criminals. And suddenly here comes journalists who
are it's taking a bit of the I've got these
voicemails from Navalni. How much you want to give me
(29:36):
the come on, two roubles, Come on, you're joking. But
I had this literal conversation with one of the data
traders who like getting this data from FSB officers and
selling it. And when he found out that we are
actually publishing investigations that he he wrote to me this
angry email. He said I thought you you were just
a criminal. You're a journalist. How dare you so? He
was so upset. Yeah, so that's it's a corrupt system,
(29:58):
and we exploited the corruption to at the data. Were
you first met Navalny? Where we first met Navalny in
the Black Forest, the small town called Saint Blasian in
on the German French Swiss board And what was necessary
described for us? I mean, you're a filmmaker and getting
people to sit down with you in front of a
camera sometimes that's a pretty herculean feat. Well, that's easy
(30:18):
to get him in the room or not. That's the
art of documentary filmmaking is getting in the rooms, being
in the right place at the right time. Well, I
think we had the best shot of anyone in the world.
And the reason that was is we were writing on
the coattails Christo. Christo came to me one day and
I was there with my producer, Odessa Rae, one of
the producers of the film, and Christo and I were
working on another project that wasn't going well. Christo walks in,
(30:42):
he says, there's something else and I was like, what's that? Christo?
He says, you know that Navalny guy. I said, yeah.
He says, I think I have a lead and who
tried to poison him? And I go, who's making that movie? Chrystal?
He goes, I don't know, should I ask? I'm like, yeah,
you should ask right now. And because of the word
Crystal had done on the screen pall case, he cracked
that very famous Russian poison story only a few years earlier.
(31:04):
Navalny was receptive and Navonne understood that this is a
guy to be taken seriously. So Crystal reached out. A
week later, we were sneaking across the German Austrian border,
which is closed because of the COVID. Where were you
at the time? We were in Vienna? What were you
doing there? We were in Vienna in limbo, waiting to
see if we could go back to another recruited you
into the the n s A. When you were you
left scat after you're come on, who recruited you? Come on?
(31:25):
I mean I just had you'd be in Vienna. You
can't even joke about that, because the Russians are gonna
take this interview. They're gonna take your voice saying that
to me. They're gonna put it on state media and
they're gonna say, look, here's the evidence alc Baldo knows
that he works for the joking Vladimir, Literally, it's too late.
They're gonna take this and they're no, watch it happened, Christas,
(31:47):
it's gonna happen. You're gonna be on Russian state propaganda
calling me a CIA asset, even though you were joking.
This is how these Russians operate. They're like, oh, he
works for the State Department. He works at the state
They already said that, and so you joke. But it's
like I'm here being like, well, they're going to use
your voice calling me that was a joke. Vladimir on
the thank you for specifying. I was in Vienna with
(32:08):
Christo and Odesta. We were working on another project and
in that former Soviet state it wasn't going well and
I my life was spiraling. I was bugging out. I
didn't know if I'd go back to Canada, if I'd
stick around for a little bit longer. And then he
walks in and magnificently says, what about Navoni? And a
week later we were sitting across from Alexey and his
chief chief investigator, Maria pev chick, and my job was
(32:31):
to convince them why we needed to make a documentary,
why we had to start right now. Krysto, what was
your perspective on that first meeting. He wasn't buying it.
He was like looking at this kid much younger. He
didn't believe it, but he allowed to give him a chance.
And the way we agreed with him is let's let's
start rolling, and then we decided later because otherwise you're
(32:52):
missing every moment every day not being recorded, and that's
what sold the whole project in Navoni. And then a
week later they were like best of friends, and it
was I would say best. I have to as a filmmaker,
I have to just maintain that that, you know, alexey
Is is an easy guy to hang out with. We
bonded over our wonkish love of politics and all of this,
(33:12):
but it's still important that I maintain a critical eye.
This is a guy who is controversial in his own way,
who's a complicated and compelling figure, and his complications make
him compelling. But he and I hit it off and
we enjoyed spending time together, and I think that's part
of the reason why we were able to mesh ourselves
in his cohort so naturally, so quickly. Documentary filmmaker Daniel
(33:36):
Roar and Belling Cat journalist Crystal grotzev. If you're enjoying
this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow
Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Daniel Roar and Crystal Growths have recount the dramatic final
(33:56):
moments with Navalni and his family before his heroic return
to Russia. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(34:16):
the Thing. I asked Daniel Roar and Crystal Grotzep to
speculate on what is next for Putin amidst the rumors
of his ailing health. The important thing is that people
at the top belief that he has cancer, and that
makes him vulnerable, and that makes them unlikely to follow
any order that he gives them that endangered their own longevity,
(34:38):
political longevity. So this is why Putin is not the
sort of all powerful dictator that he was a year ago.
Everybody knows that he may have cancer, and this is
what matters. What did the people inside Russia, think who
is his likely successor? Is someone teed up because with
the Russians there's often a likely successor. You know what
(34:59):
has being the strongest sort of strategic talking point of
the Kremlin. There's no successor. If not putting, then who
This is a phrase, the said phrase, it's a vacuum.
That's why people have actually not looked for a success
and have sort of embraced this willingness to be the
president or that's are forever. I don't think the people,
the regular people in the near future will decide who
(35:21):
the successor's It's going to be still the oligarchs and
the elite and the generals. And I wonder if at
some point, because of this war, disagregious war, Navali doesn't
become a more acceptable alternative to the oligarchs because at
least with him, they know that he's going to tax
them of their their wealth, but they're going to preserve
their lifestyle. And we're putting there. They've lost everything. They
(35:43):
are not invited to any party at at in London
or in New York anymore. They can't travel and this
will change if Navali comes to part well, Navali comes
to power, I mean if Putting, I mean to take
me through this, because I'm yearning to hear your take
on this, which is that if let's say, theoretically put
and drop dead tomorrow, then no chance in Navalni would
become the president. Then they're not going to hold an election,
(36:05):
are they. Well, it's going to be chaos and there
will be somebody who comes in as an interim our guy.
So what is Navalny's path to the presidency? Even post
put What's going to happen is a fight internal domestic fight,
strife among the different groups of the power of lead.
Putting has made the only claim to fame that he has.
He has been able to manage these different interests within
(36:27):
the generals and within the FSB, and once he's gone,
it will be a fight everybody's against everyone else. And
this is what has happened in every Western, normal country,
that is, that is the normal path to actual democracy,
which just hasn't happened during Russia yet. So I think
we're going to see a couple of years of terrible
dictatorship by somebody else that will gradually go into a
(36:48):
real election at some point. Why is poison the weapon
of choice in these assassinations. So the first answer is
that if it works, it is, and it's deniable, you
don't discover it. Now, in this case, they discovered it,
but it was not meant to be discovered. So it's
just a heart attack, right. And the second answers, if
it doesn't work, then it's so scary that it actually
(37:10):
discourages the cent it's it's the worst way to die.
You hear the shrieks that, the yells of that. You
don't want to die like that, So they want them
to suffer. They want yeah, exactly, So this is the
chemical equivalent of dumb dumb bullets exactly. But it's not new.
It's not something that put An invented, it's it inherited
(37:30):
it from the KGB. They love this thing. You may
remember sometimes it's untraceable, meaning someone's dead and you say, oh,
it's a heart attack, right, exactly. There was this Bulgarian
journalist who was killed with a poisoned umbrella, remember in
the seventies in London. That's what the KGP did. They
prepared this umbrella with a little pellet that had something
like novichok and he died. One of my favorite documentaries
his assassins. We were talking about this before with the
(37:52):
with the two women I believe are coached because they
think they're on a game show, because they kill a
brother by rub the poison in his eyes at the
airport where they're presenting him with some game show surprise. Anyway,
that that film assassins, which is absolutely numbing. But you think,
but obviously poison is better than spattering somebody's head against
the wall in a hotel, even with a silence. But
(38:14):
the reality is, if you spatter someone's head against the
wall in a hotel, then you have a as as
one of the characters in the film says, a body
with hole in it. That you have to explain. If
Alexey died on that plane, as the Russian government intended,
an autopsy would have been carried out by the criminalistics institute.
The same guys school poisoned him. So it's really the
perfect crime. Are either of you, are you worried about
(38:35):
your own safety or were you ever worried about your
own safety during the production of this film? Absolutely not.
When you're sitting next to a standing next to Alexey
and nov only who's the bravest man on the plane
and his staff who are actually in danger. You know,
you can't help but feel inspired by their courage and bravery.
I think the Russians will continue to make efforts to
discredit the film by coming after me. That's why I
(38:58):
take it so seriously when we joke about the CIA
recruitment stuff, because they they will literally take this and
they will put it on Channel one and they will say, oh, look,
here's the evidence. He's admitting it. He's he is from
this agency or that agency, which is nonsense. So I'm
more concerned about character assassination, you know, them uh, finding
someone I've never met who said that it makes a
horrible accusations about me, something like that. That's my concern.
(39:20):
What do you think, Cristal No, I totally agree with you.
That will just go after your character. They'll probably send
some nice girls to sleep with you. What are you
gonna work on next? You're gonna do in a documentary
about ABA one? I want I want to do something
that is completely totally different. I have a few things
in development that I'm apprehensive. I don't want to jink,
so I'm apprehensive to talk about um. But the most
(39:42):
documentaries I know have a bunch of pots on the stove. Yeah,
you have to, you have to, but this one was
so all consuming, and uh, it's this is a daunting
one to follow up, as I'm sure you can imagine.
But I want to make something very soon, and I
wanted to be totally totally different. But I love making documentaries,
so I hope I get to make another one now.
Navalny was the last time you were in his sup pressence?
(40:02):
When did you last seeking? I can tell you exactly.
It was January seventeenth in Berlin, Germany, at about one
thirty in the afternoon. This year, he got in, I filmed,
I was shooting. He went to prison when filming on
January seventeenth was the first day he was in car
Sarty last year, and I filmed him saying that you
see it in the film. He says goodbye to his colleagues,
(40:24):
and then we walked downstairs to the car park where
there are are cars, protective vehicles waiting for him. He
gets in the car and I didn't I was working.
I was shooting, so it's not like I could go
say thank you for so nice to meet you. By
He understood line you have to keep absolutely and he
understood that, and I understood that. And as he was
driving off, I gave him a nod and he gave
me a nod back, and he was off and you
(40:44):
never spoke to him. Nothing. Nothing. Well, you've done this
amazing job, because you have. Certainly I'm not saying this
to be kind, and I know, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm
in a long line of people that are saying to you,
what a remarkable and what a talented filmmaker you are
thanking a remarkable job with this film showing the world
who Navalny is, at least who we want to believe
(41:05):
he is. I'm disappointed that he chose to go to prison.
And although I understand the Victor and Casablanca kind of code,
but your film is going to be for many people
in this country their introduction and their first chance and
an up close look at Navalny. And and that's something
that we take very seriously, and it's it's very important
to all of us as many people in the world
(41:26):
see this film as possible. The reality is Alec that
Alexey is in peril. He is in a very bad
spot right now, and the way that you keep him
alive is by keeping his name in the global consciousness.
Is he allowed to have visitors in prison? He can
see his wife and his daughter once every three months
for an hour. This film is going to be widely
available and everyone in the world needs to see it,
(41:48):
and they need to tell their friends to see it.
Alexey's life depends on it. Thank you both, Thank you,
director Daniel Roar and journalist Christo grots of Navalny is
currently in theaters around the world and will premiere on
CNN TV in North America on April. This episode was
(42:10):
produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our
engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing
is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. When Russian opposition leader and
fierce Putin critic Alexey Navalny fell violently ill on a
flight in August of two twenty, it was suspected he
was poisoned by Novachuk, a Soviet era nerve agent. He
(00:24):
was medically evacuated to Berlin and fell into a coma,
but miraculously survived. My guests today, filmmaker Daniel Roar and
investigative journalist Christo Grotzev, were at the center of the
unfolding drama that resulted in the gripping documentary naval Me.
The film documents the quest to identify those responsible for
(00:49):
the poisoning and the plight of Alexey Navalny, whose anti
corruption platform landed him in a Russian prison where he
remains to this day. More poisoned. Putn't supposed to be
not so stupid to use this navy chalk. If you
want to kill someone, just shoot him. Jesus christ, It's
(01:09):
impossible to believe it. It's kind of stupid. The whole
idea of poisoning with a chemical weapon. What the fuck.
This is why this is so smart, because even reasonable people,
they refused to believe like what come on poisoned seriously.
(01:30):
Prior to Navalny, Daniel Roar directed the feature documentary Once
We're Brothers Robbie Robertson and the Band about the rock group.
He also shot and directed several short docks and has
been nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards. Roar has been
developing his craft since a young age. He spent a
(01:53):
year at scared the Savannah College of Art and Design,
but found his passion in a high school film class
at the Tobaco School of the Arts in Toronto. We
had this fabulous film teacher. He was like a sort
of coromogene e cool nice guy and he was very
same Mr Johnson Kevin, and uh I was. He had
(02:14):
this film class, and so I had a little cohort
of film friends. We called ourselves the Man Clan, and
the joke was we were not manly at all. We
were a bunch of film nerds and we would just
This was when DSLRs became a thing, So about ten
years ago or fifteen years ago, you could buy a
little DSLR for seven or eight hundred dollars and you
could get a shallow depth of field, an image that
(02:37):
looked like a movie. And to me, at seventeen years old,
that was revelatory. And so my friends we'd run around Toronto.
We we once had the subway system shut down by
accident setting off smoke alarms. My dad still gives me
a hard time for the time I set off the
smoke alarm in his house when we were seventeen or eighteen.
But being creative, making movies, making things, and it all
(02:57):
started for me in in a tobacoa fabulous school that
I was able to attend when I was a teenager.
And when you went to SCAD because I love SCAT
and SCATS like a lot of these schools who over
the arc of my lifetime, you know, many decades now
they have you know, raised the money and grown so significantly.
And uh, you know SCAD, when you go down there
to Savannah, they've taken over half the town. You know,
(03:19):
every available building they bought and have incorporated into that program.
And you went there for just one year and not
even a full year. I went there for about a year. Um,
I was in Savannah for one year and amazing place,
super cool talent. I'm not a school guy, and it
has nothing to do with that school. It's just that
no matter what Kevin Johnson imparted to you know, you
(03:41):
were done. I was finished. Kevin Johnson mic drop. That
was it with keV. That that was it. I learned
everything you needed to know from Kevin. From Kev's film class. Mr.
Johnson's film class, I learned everything I needed to know.
And I decided that I wanted to make documentaries and
the best way to do that would be to just
make documentary. Why documentaries? Documentaries where this art form that
(04:01):
for me existed at the confluence of all these things
I was interested in. I was very curious about traveling
and seeing the world in history and art and culture
and filmmaking, cinematography, editing, but also music and drawing, animation, painting.
For your parents in the arts they had, they were
in retail, the Schmata business. My mom and dad had
a clothing store called Higher Ground and Higher Ground for
(04:22):
Kids in Toronto for about thirty thirty five years, and
so my dad sold out aware like North Faced Patagonia, Archaracs, Canada,
Goose and so we were always the spirit of travel
was something that we was always imparted onto. My brother
and I would go on canoe trips in Algonquin Park
as as as teenagers and as kids, and so I
always had the sense of traveling and getting out into
(04:43):
the world was something really important and valuable. And and
my dad has a bunch of corny phrases that he
always says that are just foundational to my life, and
one of them is travel off the beaten path. And
certainly that's the choice I chose when I dropped out
of school and tried to pursue other things. Now the
film is out. The film is going to be released
in eight cinemas around the US on April eleven and twelve.
(05:05):
And this is obviously extraordinarily exciting for all of us.
That's a lot of screens for a doc and and
certainly Warner Brothers, who were so grateful is distributing the film,
understands the critical mission of getting this film out now
as quickly as possible. When did you first become aware
of navalmy I've been aware of NAVALNY for a few
years now, just because I'm I'm interested in Russia and
(05:26):
Russian politics and geopolitics is something that I'm interested in
and and if you're in the West and you're interest
in Russia and Navalny's name is unavoidable. But certainly my
interest in him peaked in the summer of when news
circled around the world that he had been poisoned. And
I remember vividly this three day struggle when he was
in this hospital in Siberia and the authorities weren't letting
(05:47):
him leave, and there was this weird behavior happening, and
something strange was going on, a weird thing, that they
wouldn't let him go, they wouldn't let him go to Germany,
and eventually they did. They relented. He he was in
there a little longer. I think. I think, so sink
in or fade out. Um the German couldn't detect and
so um. That was in my consciousness. At no point
(06:10):
did it ever cross my mind at that stage that oh,
I should go make a movie about this guy. It
never would have entered my my plane of reality. Well,
it just I was sitting in Toronto painting an apartment.
I just didn't occur to me. It wasn't until I
was sitting next to this man, Crystal Grozev, who's here
with us today that I thought, oh, maybe we should
go make a film about this, Maybe we should go
(06:31):
pursue that. This is the same way with all of
even your earlier shorter films. You do the one about
sex abuse, but from the priest stuff up in the
indigenous people's prolific sex offender and Canadian history. As I made,
the name of the film is Survivors, Row Survivors because
his name is Row. The man's name is Ralph Roe,
who was the Anglican minister that had this little prop
plane and he would fly up to these communities and
(06:53):
everyone adored him. He was like this this whizard missionary
fly in and everyone thought it was great. And he'd
take the kids on camp trips, but only the boys.
And it turned out that he was one of the
most insidious criminals in Canadian history. Was he abused hundreds
of thousands of boys. And so I, when I was
one or twenty two, made a short film with this
extraordinary film producer in Toronto called Peter O'Brien, and we
(07:16):
made a film about this man's crimes. Was in his
idea and he hired you two directors right when when
I was twenty one, and uh, that that film made
a little bit of noise. People saw it, and I
think it was very significant as a tool for the
community to heal and and have and have that um
but it was, you know, very challenging, and we've since
(07:37):
entered a different place in Canada. I don't know that
that's a film I would have directed now. I think
that we would be much better suited finding one of
the many indigenous filmmakers to tackle that story. But in
that moment you feel sensitive about that, well, very much,
of course, absolutely. I think now it's very important we
have to think about who gets to tell what story.
(07:59):
When I made that movie, I had no consciousness of
that That's not something that was on my radar. It
was only years later later that I reflected on it
and questioned whether or not I was the right guy
to tell that story. And the film was successful and
I think the community was appreciative that I made it.
But I think now I would I would really question that,
and I would really seek community consultation. It's complicating to
(08:20):
note that you're you know, when you talk about your
career in the brief minutes we've been talking now, you
lose sight of the fact of how young you are,
you know, so it was we we tell the audience
that you're twenty nine years old, Thank you very much.
He's go on Hollywood football now he's full flag Hollywood now,
the twenty eight year old Daniel. You don't realize that
(08:42):
you have been doing this for years now and this
inclusivity diversity thing has unfolded most vividly during those ten years,
during your career, your lifetime. Absolutely, and especially in Canada,
our consciousness about the vital necessity of which communities get
to tell which stories has has really come to the front.
It's something that I'm mindful of, as you know, a
(09:02):
Jewish kid that grew up in Toronto. It's something that
I really have to think about. My view was, you know,
it's it's the success of an individual filmmaker's career leads
them to where they are today. There's films you're making
now that people are benefiting from their learning about the world.
Documentary films can often be the beachhead for people to
understand the topic, to understand events in history beyond books
(09:25):
and beyond classroom learning. Documentaries have become tools for learning.
And I say to myself, the guy that's directing Navalny.
Let's let's be grateful for his roots and how he
got to where he has. But anyway, I'd like to
just shift for a second, because we do have our
other guests here. Crystal Grozev. You sit there and you
see that Navalny is going to come back to Moscow,
(09:48):
and you go, why why does he come back to Moscow?
Knowing he must have known what the potential was. He
seems to be being charged with embezzlement all the time,
and and and the charges dropped, and he runs from
mayor and gets the vote, which is significant but not
anything earth shattering. But he but he's got a political following.
(10:10):
I want you to take me through this line of
right before he's poisoned, where is he, what he's doing.
We're gonna try you for embezzlement, and then we suspend,
we don't do this, we don't do this, and then
we poison you. Take me through what's going on with
Putin the Russians in Navani before he's going to get poisoned. Well,
what we found out actually is that they tried to
poison him years earlier. So they started tailing him. This
(10:32):
whole unit of the Russian security service to the FSB
that comprises not only political police like the scary muscle guys,
but also chemical weapons specialists within the FSB and doctors
within the FSB. Saw a killed team, a poisoned team.
They started telling him the moment he announced his bid
for the presidency that was in two thousand seventeen, and
they tailed him on a total of sixty six trips
(10:52):
around the country throughout his whole campaign. So every little
village we visited, they were there. They stayed in hotels
near him. They usually arrived just ap of hours before
he arrived or were left just after he left. So
they were there waiting for a sign off from apparently
putting for him to be whacked, to be killed. But
this didn't come for years, or maybe it did come.
(11:12):
What they don't know is maybe they tried. But Moscow
four is the phrase that comes out in this film,
and people who see it will know that it's it's
a it's a sort of a cold word for Russia's
incompetence at the official level. So it could be that
they tried earlier to poison him but didn't work out.
So the only thing we see is that in July,
just a month and a half before the actual Coma poisoning,
(11:34):
the same team followed him and his wife to their
getaway to a Baltic coast in Russia, in the in
the Clino Gradkneberg, and apparently they tried to poison them
there again because we see his wife falling almost into
a comma because she experienceds similar symptoms to what he
did them on the wrong people eating the custard. Is
that the problem with the KGB or the FSP, Well,
(11:55):
they're just not great at poisoning. They're not they're not great,
I mean they but they try again when they have.
What they lose in competence, they make up in resilience,
So they do it. The years later, they keep trying,
They keep trying. They tried it twice on another politician
who lives here, actually Vladimir Kamos up same poison tis here.
They poisoned him there, he came back here because his
(12:15):
family lives here. He decided to go back for a
campaign trips. Six months later poisoned him again. So they tried.
They tried many times, not just once. So why that
moment in time, It's the wrong question, because maybe they
tried for four years and that was just the one
time that they made enough sort of dozeage into get
into his bloodstream by essentially smearing his underpants. That's what happened.
(12:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, I went in through him through his
lower body parts. So he goes to Berlin. He finally
gets out of there and goes to Germany to get
treated and he's cured. Navalni, as I see him on
screen and Daniel's film is crisp and sharp and alert
and bright eyed and doesn't seem impaired in anyway as
a figure in the film. And then he it's cured
(13:00):
and he comes back again. Yeah, Like, like who around
him is counseling him? Who is advising him that you
could stay here and be the leader of an opposition,
You could tour the world and be the darling of
the Western world. Very few people would command the same
resources that Navalni commanded in raising money. He could be.
It could be like the Clinton Foundation, his foundation and
(13:23):
raising money for his activities. He could be. He's very
charismatic and he could carry on his great work. Instead,
he decides to go home and they put him in
prison for night. Why does he go home? Why, Well,
you're preaching to the choir. You're asking the same questions
that I asked him, And I asked that his why?
He looked at me, like, I'm an idiot? How can
you ask this question? If I stay here, I just
become one of the many talking heads that just talk
(13:46):
to Russians from outside of Russia, and Russians would never
trust me. Russians would never believe him unless I had
partaken the daily in their daily misery. And I'm sure
that people offered him an effective and compelling argument to
the contrary. I mean, there's a lot of great work
you could do. What are you gonna be able to
accomplish from jail for nine years? And then they have
you that they're going to kill you there? Probably exactly
we got to that conversation and basically says, you're right.
(14:09):
If I were a journalist, If I were journalists, I
would stay here and continue, probably doing a better job
from here than from there. But I want to be
a politician. I want to be president one day, and
I can only do it from there, from prison. From well,
I asked him, do you realize that you're going to prison?
He says yes. I asked him, do you think it's
going to be for a couple of months. He said, no, Christo,
we don't get it. It It will be years. So he
was completely open eyed about it. And I asked his wife,
(14:31):
does she realize that this is going to happen? She
said absolutely, so, it's a different type of complex could be,
could be? But what is your opinion? Why did he
go back? I mean, I'm sure you share some of
the same opinions he does. I think fundamentally, what Alexei
was not comfortable with was the idea and notion of instructing,
(14:51):
of telling, encouraging the Russian people to take to the streets,
to go up against the regime, to risk getting arrested.
He was not comfortable saying those things, commanding those things,
encouraging those from a Parisian hotel, from a Parisian hotel,
from Ville, news from Berlin, from Vienna. If you want
to be the moral leader of a nation, which is
the role he currently occupies, talk is cheap. You have
(15:13):
to be shoulder the shoulder, and you have to be there.
And I think that what he is doing, his courage
and bravery, hopefully will be an inspiration to the Russian people.
And I think that's why he went back. But is
it something that we grapple with and struggle with to
this day. Absolutely, was it the right decision? I don't know,
but that was between Alexey Navalny and his higher power,
and that's the decision he made, and his family's lockstep
(15:33):
with him. But it's obviously something that we struggled with.
And I was like, I remember I was making the movie,
and I was hoping that we would get some sort
of uncertainty, some semblance of insecurity about the decision or
the process. The veneer of fear. The man's constitution was ironclad.
He never let on that he was afraid. He'd say, oh,
(15:55):
Daniel Jesus Christ, of course I have to go back.
What am I going to do sit in Germany? Forget it?
But I would imagine, I understand what you're saying. I mean,
I understand his commitment, but I wonder if it's going
to be easier to poison him. I mean, is he
Jeffrey Epstein. In the United States, we live in a
place where people are fatigued by scandal, they are fatigued
(16:16):
by by what I call the conspira noiak mentality. Well,
I would not be comfortable equivocating the Volni with Epstein
for obvious reason. No, no, no, But I'm saying in
terms of he's he's a sitting duck in a prison.
Get the guy in prison. If you want to whack
and put him in prison. You know where he is.
You control his movements. He is in the cutsody of
the same man who tried to murder him. Christa, what
do you think, Well, just remember that what happened to
(16:36):
the previous guys that tried to murder him. They're dead
now or one of them is most likely, right, the
guy that, yes, the guy that the ones that failed
so that they kill you. Well, basically they said, have
you sit down with the bowl of poison? So why
would the new guys trying to say to you give
me that poison left? Do you remember the scene, the
(16:57):
Marquee scene in our film when Alexey eight makes a
few phone calls I guess an extraction of confession, Remember
that part. I don't want to ruin the film from now.
Of course, there's drama in this film, unlike any other
doc I've seen in recent memory. Well, so we know
that some of the individuals who were fooled, well, The
whole point is there was a set of FSB officers
(17:18):
who had given the task to kill Navalni. They failed,
but they lived in with the belief that their government,
their president, their crook president, will protect them from publicity,
from that publicity, from neighbors taking revenge on them. That
didn't work out. These guys that tried to kill them
are now negative celebrities. They all of Russian knows their faces.
(17:40):
Their neighbors spray painted their their elevator with like our
our neighbor is a killer. Because they were fact totals
of the because they were murderous emissaries of this government,
or because they're actual fans of Navalni or both. No,
because the neighbors actually didn't realize that the government is
a government of murderers, that their neighbors that work, they
didn't realize that there were Russians who don't realize that
(18:02):
Putin is an Ardus. Yes, we're gonna go. We're gonna
get that in a second. And I do want to
put a button on what you said. You're very right,
I did. By no means that I mean to be
equivocate Epstein with a Navalny for obvious reasons, But I'm
just saying that that seems to be the key. You
want to get somebody in prison, because then you have
complete control over where they go, what they do. There's
more opportunities to kill them. So he wants to be
(18:23):
a part of things. He's willing to suffer. He's willing
to take on the horrible consequences to come back and
one day hopefully get out of prison. Do people view
Nivalny as a viable political candidate if he wasn't in prison,
if they weren't trying to poison him all the time?
Does he have any chance to become the president of Russia?
I think he does. For years, the people who doubted
him were twofold. One of one part of Russia that
(18:46):
didn't like him were fed with propaganda deities, an embezzler,
so they just alway just a crow that just wants
to get some of the government money. And another part
thought that he is a government proxidy, that he's actually
a fake full position figure, that he's very venient for
for Putin because straw man, because it's strawman that doesn't
have a chance to get into the presidency. Therefore he's
(19:06):
an easy one. But after the poisoning and especially after
the film, and honestly, any Russian who's seen the film
sees him as a viable presidential candidate. And that's why
I think this film has a big future for changing
minds and hearts in Russia. And that's why I think
and I know that Putin is so upset with the film,
not with the investigation so much, not with Navandi so much,
(19:27):
but with the film because people who see the film
see him as a valuable candidate. What did they say,
navalni embezzled. I think they said that he stole donations
from his from his foundation. But what we have to
understand is they have a menu of stuff they just
make up, like the Russian judicial system. That what do
they accuse him? They accused him. I think there was
taking money from profit he stole. Originally they said that
(19:49):
he stole lumber and some sort of commodities, and then
he stole money from the nonprofit. It's nonsense. He and
he insulted a war veteran. That's a crime. Just weird,
wacky whatever they can come up with things. And and
he and and he was given suspended sentences for two
of these inbeztlement charges. Why why didn't they dump him
in the prison then, Well, the first time I think
(20:10):
it was in twenty during his run for mayor of Moscow.
He was sentenced to five years in prison. But the
day of his sentence, tens of thousands of people came
out to the streets in protest, and I think that
rattled the regime and they said, we cannot we don't
want to deal with So with the response in public
is uh, full throated enough. If there's a lot of
(20:31):
people out there making noise about him, I'm going to
assume then on a public relations level, Navalny is a
problem for Putin. Well, he is, But what changed with
Navalni Navanni made it the big problem for Putin. His
Putin had to take much more drastic measures after he
returned from Germany than before. He had to silence the
(20:53):
islands of free media completely. He had to crush the
people coming through the streets with force, beat old women,
drag young kids in hoards to to detention centers, and
that closed a gap, that closed the valve. But but
it actually allows the pressure to increase now because these
people can go to the streets, but they have it
(21:14):
inside them that this anger, so it's a problem for
put in Daniel Roar and Crystal grot Sev. The subject
of another Daniel Roar documentary was Robbie Robertson. Robertson was
also a guest on Here's the Thing. Check out our
episode with the legendary musician. We ended up recording the
(21:38):
basement tapes. I don't know, there's something like a hundred
and forty songs or something in the course of this.
And what we would do is every day we would
go to Big Pink, We'd have some coffee, play some checkers.
Bob would write. He wrote on a typewriter, so he
would type something up. We'd go down into the basement,
(21:58):
grab everybody, grab whatever instrument was close. Might even not
be the one you play anything. Because there was no rules.
We'd sit on we'd mess around, play through a tune
and we'd say, wow, that felt kind of good to hear.
More of my conversation with Robbie Robertson go to Here's
(22:20):
the Thing dot org. After the break, Daniel Roar and
Crystal Grote tell the story of how they convinced Alexei
Navalny to allow his life to be filmed. I'm Alec
(22:40):
Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. The documentary
film Navalny was shot prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And while there is no shortage of condemnations to be
leveled against the Kremlin, I wanted to know what they
feel is the most significant criticism of Vladimir Poo and
his regime. Well, it's corruption. It's really corruption. The one
(23:04):
keyword that everybody in the understands is a driving away
value from their daily life. They see the wealth of
the elite that has nothing to do with with what
a normal Western elite would have, and then a elite
for people to understand in the timeline that elite began
to accrue on a more concentrated level. Since when that's recent,
(23:26):
isn't it in the last twenty years. Well, there's always
been people who profit it from not like in this country,
from war profit here, etcetera. But but but it seems
to me like there's an oligarchical suffice here that's bigger. Now.
Suffice it to say that the oldigarchicle layer our buddhis
school Buddhis and Judo Buddhis and like college buds of Putin,
so they came through him. They're actually holding does increased
(23:46):
dramatically during Putin's really absolutely I think before that you
didn't have as much of this. Well we had a
couple of oligarchs and some of them, but not like now. Yes,
so that that is the one criticism that is exploited
by somebody like like Navali because it's easy to point
out than as visible. And one of all the would
say if you were here is that every single issue
in Russia, it's it's foundation is in corruption, and if
(24:09):
we can tackle corruption, we can start to heal the society.
But out there's one thing I want to speak to Earlier,
you asked Christo quite a pointed question, and that's whether
or not Alexey actually has a reasonable chance of ever
becoming president. And one thing I asked him the same question.
I was like, dude, are you like delusional? Like how
how is this actually gonna happen? And what he spoke
to was the Moscow mayoral race and why that is
(24:31):
an interesting case study is because he started that race
with two percent of the vote. People didn't like them.
They caricatured him as just a blogger, and some wacky
Internet guy, and he finished with of the vote. It
wasn't a fair election. There was malfeasance. He narrowly avoided
a runoff, and I think the Kremlin, who let him
run an election, was so nervous about his performance. He
(24:54):
ran an American style campaign. He was kissing babies, knocking
on doors in the subways, distributing literature, tens of thousands
of volunteers. There has never been a political organization in
Russia like that. They were afraid. I don't know if
the guy will be president, but what I hope, at
the very least is that he will have the chance
to compete in the democratic election. Whether the Russian people
(25:15):
elect him is up to their own agency, is up
to the Russian electorate. I just hope, I dream for
a future he can run in this country. You have
people who voted for a candidate in two thousand and
sixteen and again in two thousand and twenty. Who does
what a lot of conservatives do, which is they give
them a lot of predigested pablem about what the conditions
(25:36):
are in this country. You know, that's what Fox News is.
There's people that need their news pre digested. Is it
the same in Putin's Russia. Is it like America? Meaning
does this Putin enjoy the support like Trump of a
massive number of poorly informed people. These are the lazy, informational,
(25:57):
lazy people. They they are fine, which is getting their
news from late night State TV, which is the equivalent
of Fox here, which is pre masticated, pre pre chewed,
and they don't have time, patients, or interest in getting more.
This would be about sixty percent of the population. Another
would be the people who always doubted everything and would
consider both sides to any debate to be bad guys,
(26:19):
because in Russia, that's how they grew up, being disappointed
by the political elite through through centuries and then or
the younger guys who are actually interested in information actively.
What changed with the Navali poisoning and the protests after
that is that this there was the disinterested. They actually
became interested and they figured out finally that Putting is
(26:41):
the bad guy here. But they were afraid to go
out to the streets. So that but that's still progress,
because that doesn't make them uninformed. They just made them
makes them afraid. But the one other thing I want
to speak to, which is piggy back and alf of
what Crystal just said. I think it's true that a
large majority of the country is being spoon fed this
state media, but I don't think it is totally the
agency of the people. It's like there's literally a vacuum
(27:04):
of information. It's impossible to obtain if you're living in
the middle of the country, if you're not saving and
so absolutely, it's a totally different dynamics, a different dichotomy,
and it just really needs to be understood that in
Russia you cannot access other points of view, other information
unless you're a super savvy person who knows how to
(27:25):
use VPNs and who knows how to get around censorship.
I disagree with it because even before this censorship was introduced,
there were islands of free media there. You could get
to Twitter, you could get to Facebook. People are just
too lazy. The six people just don't want to do that.
I want to note for our listeners, this is the
first moment where Daniel and Questa are in disagreement. Let's
(27:47):
mark this in the script. But this is what we
always dream of on these shows. Now, how did you first?
I mean, you investigated the poisoning and you did a
lot of work writing about it and exposing the poisoning, correct,
you know, without giving a company's secrets if you will,
and proprietary information. How do you go about that? Like,
how does that begin? How did how did that begin?
For you describe in vague terms when you start calling
(28:09):
it never starts with that investigation. It always starts with
a previous investigation that you've learned something that you keep
it at the back of your mind and it comes
handed later. So what happened in this case? We investigated
the poisoning of remember the Scriptles, the former Russian double
spy who went to to the UK and the Russian
military intelligence tried to poison him with Novi schock in
(28:30):
Salisbury in two thousand eighteen. So we had investigated this,
we had cracked this crime. We found out where the
poisoners had taken their physical poison, their Novi chock, and
this turned out to be a particular institution in Russia.
And we're not giving too much away, but it's a
lab that we discovered and presumed is giving poison to
anybody who needs it, like any government agency who's who
wants to kill somebody gets the poison from there. So
(28:52):
we decided to trace those guys from that institute, from
that lab and see with whom they talked in the
days before Navalny was poison And that's how we find
and how do you find that? Well, that's the beauty
of this crazy Russian corrupt system. Because Russia is corrupt
and dictatorial. The government wants to have information on anybody
at any given time, so they gather all this information
(29:14):
on you, and that informations for saying that information is
for sale because it's corb because Putin cannot survive if
it doesn't allow his FSB under links to actually make
money on on selling whatever. Some of them are vulnerable,
some of them are probably like you exactly. They usually
sell this to criminals. And suddenly here comes journalists who
are it's taking a bit of the I've got these
voicemails from Navalni. How much you want to give me
(29:36):
the come on, two roubles, Come on, you're joking. But
I had this literal conversation with one of the data
traders who like getting this data from FSB officers and
selling it. And when he found out that we are
actually publishing investigations that he he wrote to me this
angry email. He said I thought you you were just
a criminal. You're a journalist. How dare you so? He
was so upset. Yeah, so that's it's a corrupt system,
(29:58):
and we exploited the corruption to at the data. Were
you first met Navalny? Where we first met Navalny in
the Black Forest, the small town called Saint Blasian in
on the German French Swiss board And what was necessary
described for us? I mean, you're a filmmaker and getting
people to sit down with you in front of a
camera sometimes that's a pretty herculean feat. Well, that's easy
(30:18):
to get him in the room or not. That's the
art of documentary filmmaking is getting in the rooms, being
in the right place at the right time. Well, I
think we had the best shot of anyone in the world.
And the reason that was is we were writing on
the coattails Christo. Christo came to me one day and
I was there with my producer, Odessa Rae, one of
the producers of the film, and Christo and I were
working on another project that wasn't going well. Christo walks in,
(30:42):
he says, there's something else and I was like, what's that? Christo?
He says, you know that Navalny guy. I said, yeah.
He says, I think I have a lead and who
tried to poison him? And I go, who's making that movie? Chrystal?
He goes, I don't know, should I ask? I'm like, yeah,
you should ask right now. And because of the word
Crystal had done on the screen pall case, he cracked
that very famous Russian poison story only a few years earlier.
(31:04):
Navalny was receptive and Navonne understood that this is a
guy to be taken seriously. So Crystal reached out. A
week later, we were sneaking across the German Austrian border,
which is closed because of the COVID. Where were you
at the time? We were in Vienna? What were you
doing there? We were in Vienna in limbo, waiting to
see if we could go back to another recruited you
into the the n s A. When you were you
left scat after you're come on, who recruited you? Come on?
(31:25):
I mean I just had you'd be in Vienna. You
can't even joke about that, because the Russians are gonna
take this interview. They're gonna take your voice saying that
to me. They're gonna put it on state media and
they're gonna say, look, here's the evidence alc Baldo knows
that he works for the joking Vladimir, Literally, it's too late.
They're gonna take this and they're no, watch it happened, Christas,
(31:47):
it's gonna happen. You're gonna be on Russian state propaganda
calling me a CIA asset, even though you were joking.
This is how these Russians operate. They're like, oh, he
works for the State Department. He works at the state
They already said that, and so you joke. But it's
like I'm here being like, well, they're going to use
your voice calling me that was a joke. Vladimir on
the thank you for specifying. I was in Vienna with
(32:08):
Christo and Odesta. We were working on another project and
in that former Soviet state it wasn't going well and
I my life was spiraling. I was bugging out. I
didn't know if I'd go back to Canada, if I'd
stick around for a little bit longer. And then he
walks in and magnificently says, what about Navoni? And a
week later we were sitting across from Alexey and his
chief chief investigator, Maria pev chick, and my job was
(32:31):
to convince them why we needed to make a documentary,
why we had to start right now. Krysto, what was
your perspective on that first meeting. He wasn't buying it.
He was like looking at this kid much younger. He
didn't believe it, but he allowed to give him a chance.
And the way we agreed with him is let's let's
start rolling, and then we decided later because otherwise you're
(32:52):
missing every moment every day not being recorded, and that's
what sold the whole project in Navoni. And then a
week later they were like best of friends, and it
was I would say best. I have to as a filmmaker,
I have to just maintain that that, you know, alexey
Is is an easy guy to hang out with. We
bonded over our wonkish love of politics and all of this,
(33:12):
but it's still important that I maintain a critical eye.
This is a guy who is controversial in his own way,
who's a complicated and compelling figure, and his complications make
him compelling. But he and I hit it off and
we enjoyed spending time together, and I think that's part
of the reason why we were able to mesh ourselves
in his cohort so naturally, so quickly. Documentary filmmaker Daniel
(33:36):
Roar and Belling Cat journalist Crystal grotzev. If you're enjoying
this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow
Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Daniel Roar and Crystal Growths have recount the dramatic final
(33:56):
moments with Navalni and his family before his heroic return
to Russia. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(34:16):
the Thing. I asked Daniel Roar and Crystal Grotzep to
speculate on what is next for Putin amidst the rumors
of his ailing health. The important thing is that people
at the top belief that he has cancer, and that
makes him vulnerable, and that makes them unlikely to follow
any order that he gives them that endangered their own longevity,
(34:38):
political longevity. So this is why Putin is not the
sort of all powerful dictator that he was a year ago.
Everybody knows that he may have cancer, and this is
what matters. What did the people inside Russia, think who
is his likely successor? Is someone teed up because with
the Russians there's often a likely successor. You know what
(34:59):
has being the strongest sort of strategic talking point of
the Kremlin. There's no successor. If not putting, then who
This is a phrase, the said phrase, it's a vacuum.
That's why people have actually not looked for a success
and have sort of embraced this willingness to be the
president or that's are forever. I don't think the people,
the regular people in the near future will decide who
(35:21):
the successor's It's going to be still the oligarchs and
the elite and the generals. And I wonder if at
some point, because of this war, disagregious war, Navali doesn't
become a more acceptable alternative to the oligarchs because at
least with him, they know that he's going to tax
them of their their wealth, but they're going to preserve
their lifestyle. And we're putting there. They've lost everything. They
(35:43):
are not invited to any party at at in London
or in New York anymore. They can't travel and this
will change if Navali comes to part well, Navali comes
to power, I mean if Putting, I mean to take
me through this, because I'm yearning to hear your take
on this, which is that if let's say, theoretically put
and drop dead tomorrow, then no chance in Navalni would
become the president. Then they're not going to hold an election,
(36:05):
are they. Well, it's going to be chaos and there
will be somebody who comes in as an interim our guy.
So what is Navalny's path to the presidency? Even post
put What's going to happen is a fight internal domestic fight,
strife among the different groups of the power of lead.
Putting has made the only claim to fame that he has.
He has been able to manage these different interests within
(36:27):
the generals and within the FSB, and once he's gone,
it will be a fight everybody's against everyone else. And
this is what has happened in every Western, normal country,
that is, that is the normal path to actual democracy,
which just hasn't happened during Russia yet. So I think
we're going to see a couple of years of terrible
dictatorship by somebody else that will gradually go into a
(36:48):
real election at some point. Why is poison the weapon
of choice in these assassinations. So the first answer is
that if it works, it is, and it's deniable, you
don't discover it. Now, in this case, they discovered it,
but it was not meant to be discovered. So it's
just a heart attack, right. And the second answers, if
it doesn't work, then it's so scary that it actually
(37:10):
discourages the cent it's it's the worst way to die.
You hear the shrieks that, the yells of that. You
don't want to die like that, So they want them
to suffer. They want yeah, exactly, So this is the
chemical equivalent of dumb dumb bullets exactly. But it's not new.
It's not something that put An invented, it's it inherited
(37:30):
it from the KGB. They love this thing. You may
remember sometimes it's untraceable, meaning someone's dead and you say, oh,
it's a heart attack, right, exactly. There was this Bulgarian
journalist who was killed with a poisoned umbrella, remember in
the seventies in London. That's what the KGP did. They
prepared this umbrella with a little pellet that had something
like novichok and he died. One of my favorite documentaries
his assassins. We were talking about this before with the
(37:52):
with the two women I believe are coached because they
think they're on a game show, because they kill a
brother by rub the poison in his eyes at the
airport where they're presenting him with some game show surprise. Anyway,
that that film assassins, which is absolutely numbing. But you think,
but obviously poison is better than spattering somebody's head against
the wall in a hotel, even with a silence. But
(38:14):
the reality is, if you spatter someone's head against the
wall in a hotel, then you have a as as
one of the characters in the film says, a body
with hole in it. That you have to explain. If
Alexey died on that plane, as the Russian government intended,
an autopsy would have been carried out by the criminalistics institute.
The same guys school poisoned him. So it's really the
perfect crime. Are either of you, are you worried about
(38:35):
your own safety or were you ever worried about your
own safety during the production of this film? Absolutely not.
When you're sitting next to a standing next to Alexey
and nov only who's the bravest man on the plane
and his staff who are actually in danger. You know,
you can't help but feel inspired by their courage and bravery.
I think the Russians will continue to make efforts to
discredit the film by coming after me. That's why I
(38:58):
take it so seriously when we joke about the CIA
recruitment stuff, because they they will literally take this and
they will put it on Channel one and they will say, oh, look,
here's the evidence. He's admitting it. He's he is from
this agency or that agency, which is nonsense. So I'm
more concerned about character assassination, you know, them uh, finding
someone I've never met who said that it makes a
horrible accusations about me, something like that. That's my concern.
(39:20):
What do you think, Cristal No, I totally agree with you.
That will just go after your character. They'll probably send
some nice girls to sleep with you. What are you
gonna work on next? You're gonna do in a documentary
about ABA one? I want I want to do something
that is completely totally different. I have a few things
in development that I'm apprehensive. I don't want to jink,
so I'm apprehensive to talk about um. But the most
(39:42):
documentaries I know have a bunch of pots on the stove. Yeah,
you have to, you have to, but this one was
so all consuming, and uh, it's this is a daunting
one to follow up, as I'm sure you can imagine.
But I want to make something very soon, and I
wanted to be totally totally different. But I love making documentaries,
so I hope I get to make another one now.
Navalny was the last time you were in his sup pressence?
(40:02):
When did you last seeking? I can tell you exactly.
It was January seventeenth in Berlin, Germany, at about one
thirty in the afternoon. This year, he got in, I filmed,
I was shooting. He went to prison when filming on
January seventeenth was the first day he was in car
Sarty last year, and I filmed him saying that you
see it in the film. He says goodbye to his colleagues,
(40:24):
and then we walked downstairs to the car park where
there are are cars, protective vehicles waiting for him. He
gets in the car and I didn't I was working.
I was shooting, so it's not like I could go
say thank you for so nice to meet you. By
He understood line you have to keep absolutely and he
understood that, and I understood that. And as he was
driving off, I gave him a nod and he gave
me a nod back, and he was off and you
(40:44):
never spoke to him. Nothing. Nothing. Well, you've done this
amazing job, because you have. Certainly I'm not saying this
to be kind, and I know, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm
in a long line of people that are saying to you,
what a remarkable and what a talented filmmaker you are
thanking a remarkable job with this film showing the world
who Navalny is, at least who we want to believe
(41:05):
he is. I'm disappointed that he chose to go to prison.
And although I understand the Victor and Casablanca kind of code,
but your film is going to be for many people
in this country their introduction and their first chance and
an up close look at Navalny. And and that's something
that we take very seriously, and it's it's very important
to all of us as many people in the world
(41:26):
see this film as possible. The reality is Alec that
Alexey is in peril. He is in a very bad
spot right now, and the way that you keep him
alive is by keeping his name in the global consciousness.
Is he allowed to have visitors in prison? He can
see his wife and his daughter once every three months
for an hour. This film is going to be widely
available and everyone in the world needs to see it,
(41:48):
and they need to tell their friends to see it.
Alexey's life depends on it. Thank you both, Thank you,
director Daniel Roar and journalist Christo grots of Navalny is
currently in theaters around the world and will premiere on
CNN TV in North America on April. This episode was
(42:10):
produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our
engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing
is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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