A documentary tracking jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny -- an anticorruption campaigner who is one of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics -- as he recovered in Berlin after being poisoned has won this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.
The victory, announced at the 95th Oscar awards ceremony in Hollywood, California, on March 12, came as Navalny is serving a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole when he was medically evacuated from Siberia in a coma after suffering a near-fatal poisoning in August 2020 that he blames on Russian security operatives acting at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The film has not been shown publicly in Russia.
"There's one person who couldn't be with us here tonight -- Aleksei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, who 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," Canadian-born director Daniel Roher said while accepting the award along with Navalny's wife, son, and daughter.
Navalny has blamed Putin for his poisoning with a Novichok-style chemical substance. The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny's poisoning.
WATCH: The director of the documentary about jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny reveals how he shot his Oscar-winning film. (Originally published on February 17, 2022)
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Director Of Oscar-Winning Navalny Documentary Captured 'Extraordinary' Moments
The Washington Post reported that Navalny received news of the Oscar victory from his lawyer while attending a court hearing via video link from the prison where he is being held.
In a tweet on March 13, the Team Navalny group called the award "great" and "rewarding" and said it will help "tens of millions of people" around the world learn about the activist's plight.
"Many of them will watch the film, learn in detail about the poisoning, Putin's killers, and the Russian opposition," it said.
"But the ceremony is over, Aleksei Navalny still faces up to 35 years in prison. He continues to sit in incredibly difficult conditions for the truth about thieves and murderers," it added.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had not seen the film and declined to comment on the "cinematic merits of the film" but said that Hollywood is known to sometimes "politicize" its awards.
Roher partnered with open-source investigative group Bellingcat to tell the story of what happened after the 46-year-old anticorruption advocate survived the poisoning and tries to piece together who was behind it.
Navalny's original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case. In March 2022, he was handed a separate nine-year prison term on charges of contempt and embezzlement through fraud that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated.
"My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy," Yulia Navalnaya said on stage at the awards. "Aleksei, I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong my love."
On the same day as the film’s world premiere in January 2022, Russia added Navalny and several of his allies to its list of "terrorists and extremists" in the latest in a series of moves by the authorities to stamp out opposition to Putin. Many of those designated have already fled Russia.
Concern has been growing in recent months over Navalny's health and his treatment in prison.
His daughter Dasha Navalnaya, a junior at Stanford University in California, told CNN as she arrived at the awards ceremony that her father is “doing all right,” though his health is “slowly deteriorating, which is quite a concern.”
Navalny, who has been a persistent thorn in Putin's side by exposing corruption and organizing pro-democracy protests, said on social media on February 1 that he was being placed in a solitary confinement cell for six months.
That comes on top of spending more than 100 days in solitary in the past six months for what he and his supporters say are dubious reasons.
Since January 1, dozens of lawmakers, lawyers, and physicians in Russia have urged Putin, the Prosecutor-General's Office, and the presidential Council for Human Rights to intervene on behalf of Navalny.