As Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter attend Sunday’s Oscars to honor Daniel Roher’s nominated documentary “Navalny,” his daughter, Dasha, delivered a touching message to her imprisoned father on the red carpet.
“I miss him and I love him and we’re doing everything we can to get him out,” Dasha Navalnaya told TheWrap on the Oscars red carpet. “I’m just honored to be here to represent the Russian people who are fighting against authoritarian regime in the country and to get my dad out of prison.”
While Roher admits attending the 95th Academy Awards feels “amazing” and represents a “terrific honor,” the director of the Best Documentary Feature nominee confirmed he is thinking of Navalny and that the Russian dissident is “with [him] in spirit.”
“I don’t lose sight of the fact that I’m here because Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, is sitting in the Gulag six and a half hours outside of Moscow,” Roher told TheWrap. “He’s the world’s foremost political prisoner, and he is languishing in prison specifically because of his anti war advocacy — I don’t lose sight of that.”
As the ongoing war in Ukraine recently passed its one-year mark, Roher says President Joe Biden’s “steadfast support of Ukraine is a good start” and praised the administration’s sanctions, though he stated that “there’s always more that they can do.”
“My primary focus is is on Russian domestic politics, and making sure Alexei Navalny survives this ordeal,” Roher concluded.
“Navalny,” which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, follows Navalny’s emergence as a rival to Putin, which ultimately led to his almost fatal poisoning and subsequent recovery and investigation into the incident.