Well then. I had planned to spend this day looking sharp and dressed up—in a tuxedo, with a glass of champagne at the premiere—but instead I’ll be spending it, as usual, in boots, prison clothes, and with a mug of tea. Still, that only makes the story more interesting, and you can drink the champagne on my behalf. For several months—from the moment I came out of the coma until my arrest—there was one phrase in my life that was really starting to get on my nerves. I heard it often, and it went like this: “Crazy things are happening all around you, just like in a movie. You absolutely have to film it all and release a documentary about what’s going on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.” And I kept wanting to say: “Oh, leave me alone—they’re already making a film, they’re making it.” But I couldn’t—everything had to be kept under strict secrecy. In fact, while I was still in the hospital, we decided that everything happening—the Novichok nerve agent, the poisoning, the hospital, the security—was too wild not to film. And even though I can’t stand the format of “you just do what you were planning to do, go about your business, and we’ll just walk around with a camera filming,” I decided it was worth a try. Yulia @yulia_navalnaya sighed and agreed too. The kids didn’t really have a choice. So we started filming. At first it was just Pevchikh @maria_pevchikh literally with an iPhone. Then we happened to meet a young director, @daniel_roher, who had originally been making a film about Christo Grozev, but ended up making one about us. Just to be safe, we filmed everything. How I was treated and recovered. How, together with Christo, a full-on thriller began—with the investigation and the discovery of an FSB (Russian security service) squad of poisoners. How I called my would-be killers. They filmed as we were filming *Putin’s Palace*. And so on. The last time the film crew was with me was at the moment when, at border control, men in uniform said to me: “Come with us.” And now there are two pieces of news. Bad and good. The bad news: the prison library at Penal Colony No. 2 doesn’t have an HBO Max subscription, where this film will be shown. The good news: the film is finished, and you will definitely see it before I do. The world premiere is just around the corner, and after that, I hope you’ll go see it in theaters too. So, watch it for yourselves—and be sure to tell me how it turned out. I’m dying of curiosity, as you can imagine 😉 📸 @niki_waltl