Putin’s Palace (2021). Watch Your Back.
Understandably, it is a luxury of sorts for us simple mortals to watch a newly released Russian documentary film about Mr. Putin’s palace, but we find time.
To date, it’s been watched 116,702,430 times by those on both sides of the aisle.
The disparity between poverty and wealth has been there throughout the ages. What makes the 21st century to stand out in that regard is…nothing. What could make it to stand out — what we do with the knowledge about the corrupted governments.
While we watch and learn about these carefully highlighted facts, the wheels of power & corruption machine, in Russia, keep spinning, in a different dimension — dark, robust, deadly…just as the one to whom they serve.
The level of corruption in Russia, that Alexei Navalny’s documentary, “Putin’s palace. History of world’s largest bribe” attempted to unveil, is hardly surprising.
We may find ourselves thinking at some point that had we known all truth about it it would not have made any difference. Once we get an idea, our response to it is what could bring change, one step at a time.
This wasn’t the first film by Navalny’s group that had a clear investigative nature, with a strong bias towards the anti-corruption agenda. Navalny’s previous documentaries (including the one about Dmitry Medvedev, titled Don’t call him “Dimon,” 2017) did justice, in sufficient details and depth, in uncovering the shady businesses of those in power. The price Navalny and his team have been paying is high. They are not alone.
A group of Russian film critics (The Russian Guild of Film Critics) nominated Navalny’s documentary for The White Elephant award (a Russian equivalent for The National Society of Film Critics). One of them, Pavel Shvedov, appeared in a news report, on NavalnyLive YouTube channel, explaining that they had a conflict with “the film establishment” because of that nomination of the film.
According to Shvedov, forty-one members (13–14%) of the Guild voted for that nomination but their nomination was dismissed. The president of the Russian Guild of Film Critics & Experts, Kirill Razlogov, stated that the nomination was not relevant because, in paraphrase, “film art should stay away from politics.”
Pavel Shvedov states that the situation at the Guild may lead to a major schism among the members. He might be right because, for instance, a Russian director Andrey Konchalovsky, whose film Dear Comrades! won a special prize of jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, pulled his film from The White Elephant award, in support of Navalny’s film.
Among the forty-one members who nominated Navalny’s film were such highly respected film directors as Garry Bardin, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Alexey Popogrebsky, Alexei Fedorchenko, Vitaly Mansky, and Viktor Kossakovsky.
Filmmakers such as Garry Bardin and Andrei Zvyagintsev have been outspoken about other human rights violations in Russia.
Even though The White Elephant nomination of Navalny’s film was negated, it sent ripples throughout the various levels of intelligentsia communities in Russia.
A renowned Russian author, Ludmila Ulitskaya, joined a group of a few aforementioned film directors in writing a letter to The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN, Russian: Федеральная служба исполнения наказаний, ФСИН), to allow Alexei Navalny to see a proper doctor at the prison, when his health had started rapidly deteriorate as a consequence of the prior poisoning and the prison conditions.
Putin’s Palace, in Navalny’s words, is a psychological portrait of man who lost his mind in his pursuit of power and wealth. Fearless Alexei calls Putin “a little man” and maybe he is right. Though facts cry out loud — little men can kill, for “crossing the red line.” Watch your back.
