A new documentary shows the Russian opposition leader tricking a confession out of the secret agents who tried to kill him almost two years ago | gmaddox
, which won an audience award at Sundance Film Festival and is screening at both the Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival, after meeting Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev. He had been struggling to develop a different documentary at the time.
While Roher filmed, Navalny starts phoning the agents one by one to ask why they wanted to kill him. They hang up immediately so he decides to pass himself off as an investigating official asking why the operation failed.Another agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, falls for the ruse and spends more than 45 minutes discussing the murder plot.“One of these lightbulb moments”: documentary director Daniel Roher.Kudryavtsev reveals the poison had been smeared inside Navalny’s blue underpants.
“We have this idea that the Russians are the best at trade craft and that they have a fabulous spy network, but the reality is quite different,” he says. “Kudryavtsev made his bed and he’s got to lie in it, even if it’s six feet under the ground.”