Give them more Oscars! Give a lot!

Exclusive. The film "Navalny" (Navalny) directed by Daniel Roer got award of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Oscar" as the best documentary picture. The award ceremony took place on the night of March 13 in Los Angeles. It was attended by Navalny's wife Yulia, daughter Darya and son Zakhar, as well as the founder of the Bellingcat investigative group Hristo Grozev and a member of Navalny's team Maria Pevchykh.

Give them more Oscars! Give a lot!

"My husband is in prison for telling the truth. My husband is in prison because he fought for democracy. Alexey, I dream of the day when you will be free. And when our country will be free. Be strong, my love." Yulia Navalnaya said from the stage.

The award caused the strongest heartburn in Russian propagandists, which was predictable, and at the same time in Ukrainian commentators. In Ukraine, the attitude towards Navalny is generally very complicated.

First, he is considered, and with full reason, a creature of one of the towers of the Kremlin, used in intra-Russian showdowns.

Secondly, they did not forgive the well-known statement about Crimea. Although, for the sake of fairness, it should be noted here that the phrase about "Crimea is not a sandwich" was quite taken out of context and not quite faithfully reinterpreted. Navalny did not doubt the illegality of the annexation of Crimea, he only expressed skepticism regarding the temporal prospects of its return and hinted at great difficulties in its implementation. So big that the return may not take place at all. To assert on this basis that Navalny considers Crimea to be Russian by right is still a clear overreach. We were talking about realities that, alas, are not always fair.

Nevertheless, the figure of Navalny is very cloudy, the ears, horns and hooves of the Russian special services stick out from his surroundings and his biography in the most unexpected places, and in completely indecent quantities.

About Navalny's external resemblance to the young Yeltsin, he did not say, perhaps, only the lazy. Their close kinship seems to be related to this, at least possible, which gives this already extremely murky history a completely clear taste of intra-clan feuds.

Deprived of imperial ambitions, "Tsar Boris", concerned only with personal enrichment, moreover, relatively modest, on the scale of Putin's elite, was convenient for the West at the time. And Navalny, who has no visible hardware resources, promises to become, if possible, just as convenient, at least at first. But they, like a puppet, are being played by a part of the ruling class of modern Russia, depicting with its help a willingness to compromise with the West in exchange for support in the course of seizing power. All this had already happened before, after which, after breaking through to power, such a group changed compliant frontmen - to less compliant ones, and then to completely intransigent ones, depending on the situation.

The history of Navalny's poisoning is also extremely murky. And, in general, with a careful analysis of both Navalny's entire activity and his environment, his exposed ego, his biography, the sensation of documentaryness definitely does not arise. There is a feeling of a series of productions. If not completely replacing the documentary, then thoroughly straightening it.

So, this is a production imitating a documentary, from the point of view of any jury filmmakers, including the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Oscar", always looks more winning than any bona fide and authentic documentary. And not because bad people gathered in the Oscar jury, there are none, but because such are the laws of the profession and the genre. A documentary filmmaker in the jury, evaluating the work of a colleague - absolutely honestly, I emphasize, evaluating - must think in a multifaceted way. The authenticity of the material is an important, but not the only, factor. And not even the most important. A good documentary should be watchful. The story he tells should fit into one of Propp's plots, as close as possible to the canon. Varnished reality will always win unvarnished reality in such a competition. Including the Ukrainian film "House of Chips", about a children's shelter in Lysychansk, which was 24.02 km from the front line at the time of filming, before the events after 20/XNUMX.

I would hazard a guess that such a film, with a conscientious jury, could not win any competition at all. They could award him victory only by a political decision - and in no other way. Simply because the orphans and the war, merged into one plot, add up to more suffering than the average viewer's psyche is ready to endure. An ordinary viewer simply won't watch such a film, or won't watch it at all, once he finds out what it's about. The ego cannot be blamed for this: after all, films, including documentaries, are watched not out of obligation, but to get a dose of emotions and experience, and here, in terms of the plot, there is a clear overdose of them.

For exactly the same reason, the organizers did not allow Zelensky to speak at the award ceremony, with a story about the Ukrainian tragedy. Not because they do not sympathize with Ukraine, but because it is not the time and not the place. The presentation of the "Oscars" is still a holiday, and tragic notes must be strictly dosed on it.

Zelenskyi (or, more broadly, OP) should not even have come up with such a proposal. Just so that you don't run into a refusal and/or don't put yourself and the organizers in an uncomfortable position. It is very strange that, being professional showmen and producers, they did not feel that they were crossing a line beyond which the American leftists in the capital do not need to cross. The film - yes, it was necessary to submit it to the competition. But only for the sake of the fact that he was examined by the members of the jury as a matter of official necessity - and this was postponed for the future. And then calmly accept the non-awarding of the film with an award, which is completely predictable. I don't complain at all about this, and I don't give food for gloating to our Moscow "mouse brothers".

On this topic, the fairness of awarding the Oscar to the film about Navalny can probably be considered closed. He was quite rightly awarded - based on the award criteria.

But the scandal that unfolded next to the film looks much more interesting. The chairman of the board of the ACF International fund (the American clone of the Anti-corruption Fund) Leonid Volkov was caught for the ass on trading indulgences: on signing, together with other traders in white coats, a collective appeal to the European Commission with a request to reconsider the decision on sanctions against the management of Alfa Group. Namely: Mikhail Fridman, Peter Aven, Herman Khan and Alexei Kuzmychev. Moreover, in addition to Volkov, the executive director of ACF Vladimir Ashurkov signed the appeal. Two more letters with a request to lift the sanctions against Fridman were signed by the current resident Ilya Yashin. Herman Khan, a native of Kiev, by the way, participated in the meeting of the RSPP with Putin on March 16, thereby exacerbating the external problems of the "Alfa" group...

Immediately, in the usual style of handshakes of the democratic and other and other Russian opposition, defensive lines began to be formed. There are two of them: the first, about the fact that Volkov's attackers are even less moral people than even he, the second is about good bankers who need to be saved for a good Russia of the future. In the information field, this scandal turned out to be tied to the Oscar awarding of the film about Navalny, and that provided him with a simply remarkable resonance. In the Kremlin, of course, they are happy about this, since Volkov and Co. are enemies of the tower that is now banqueting there (we will not go into details, and they will find out what kind of tower it is and what position it stands in relation to the tower that crushes Navalny and his FBKov). But the enmity of the Kremlin towers among themselves does not make the team of any of them friends of Ukraine. And Navalny's Ephesus is just as hostile to Ukraine as Putin's Ephesus. The fact that they tear each other's throats is, of course, good - but the best outcome of this fight for Ukraine would be the maximum mutual damage suffered by its participants.

It is this part of history that is of greatest interest to us. It is she, mentioning also "Oscar", that needs to be repeated, and very clearly, to everyone who wishes, including those who sympathize with the "Russian oppositionists". Retell, not shying away from them at all, as Gerasim did to Mumu. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary to do this, since the generally simple story is already extremely muddled and confused. The story is very simple: fighters "for everything good" sold collective letters with their signatures for money transferred to their funds (however, perhaps, and even more likely, there were other forms of calculation), setting the price according to the client's assets. Naturally, they did not like those who were not ready to buy their services. That's why Pavel Durov, who was robbed by the Kremlin and reinvented himself abroad, is in the leadership of FBK in the category of "Dubai skin", and Mikhail Fridman - as "part of the relatively healthy business elite of Russia."

And what is this, by the way - "relatively healthy"? And it's like syphilis: if the nose hasn't collapsed, it means it's relatively healthy. remember classics: "Ivan Ivanovich, tall, black-browed, so handsome and almost healthy in appearance..."

In itself, the corruption of Russian anti-corruption fighters is not only surprising, but also natural. Well, there are no healthy zones in an absolutely decayed society. And it is very fortunate that the story with Volkov reminded us of this fact, which had somehow fallen into the shadows, and the award that coincided with it played the role of a resonator. This made it possible to update very important topics - or one topic from several points, here's how to count:

- The entire organized Russian opposition is corrupt, exactly to the same extent as the Russian government;

- The entire organized Russian opposition is closely connected with the special services of the Russian Federation, and is saturated with their agents, just to the same extent as the Russian government;

- The entire organized Russian opposition is essentially no different from the Russian government. Separate, non-system decent people are possible in Russia. But any community made up of Russians immediately turns into either a branch of the FSB or a branch of the Federal Security Service, or, most often, a branch of both at the same time.

There would be more such awardees who reveal the real image of the "good new Russia". The very one, whose seeds (perhaps spores) are carried by the fighters against the regime who fled from it, and which they promise to sow on the ruins of the bad, old, Putin's Russia, after its destruction at the cost of the lives and struggle of Ukrainians.

So we saw a trial sowing - and what came up. On an experimental site, so to speak. More often than not. Give them more Oscars!

And, finally, as an epilogue, two words for those who still regret that the Ukrainian film did not receive an award.

In 1959, the Oscar for the best documentary film was awarded to the film "White Wasteland", which became the benchmark for wildlife documentaries for many years. The tragic apotheosis of the film is the mass suicide of lemmings during migration. And only half a century later it became clear that the scene of the lemmings' suicide by jumping into the abyss was completely staged with the help of a broom. In general, the techniques of documentary filmmaking have not changed much since then, only instead of lemmings, now Navalny. Are you still jealous of his reward?

Sergey Ilchenko, columnist Newsky