ACCEPTANCE SPEECH: DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE) - NAVALNY

By Oscars® and Academy Awards® and Olivia Marshall

First Published 14/03/2023

Location: LA

Documentary Feature
"NAVALNY"
Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris

DANIEL ROHER:  Thank you to the Academy.  We are humble to be in the company of such an extraordinary crop of documentary filmmakers of these films.  Redefine what it is to make a documentary.  

To everyone who helped make this film, you know who you are, your bravery and courage made this film possible.  

We owe so much to our Bulgarian nerd with the laptop, Christo Grozev.  Christo, you risked everything to tell this story.  And it's investigative journalists like you and Maria Pevchikh that empower our work.  

To the Navalny family, Yulia, Dasha and Nahar, thank you for your courage.  The world is with you.

And there's one person who couldn't be with us tonight, Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition remains in solitary confinement for what he calls  I want to make sure we get his words exactly right  Vladimir Putin's unjust war of aggression in Ukraine.

I would like to dedicate this award to Navalny, to all political prisoners around the world.

Alexei, the world has not forgotten your vital message to us all.  We must not be afraid to oppose dictators and authoritarianism wherever it rears its head.