Alexei Navalny, Putin critic and subject of Oscar-winning “Navalny” doc, reportedly dies in prison at 47

He was serving a 19-year sentence in a Russian penal colony in the Arctic before his death.

Alexei Navalny, a political activist whose work as the leader of the opposition movement against Russian president Vladimir Putin led to a central role in the 2022 Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, has reportedly died at age 47 while imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony.

According to multiple outlets, including the Associated Press and Reuters, Navalny died Friday after collapsing immediately after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for his sustained resistance to Putin.

Per reports, the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District released a statement indicating that Navalny "felt unwell" following a walk in the remote town of Kharp, located roughly 1,200 miles north of Moscow. He reportedly passed out after returning, and medical staff were called to assist him, but their efforts were not enough to save his life.

Navalny's wife, Yulia, told Reuters that she wasn't sure her husband was dead, because Putin and his government "lie incessantly."

After heading to Moscow during a long recovery stemming from poisoning via nerve agent, which Navalny insisted came at the hands of Putin, Navalny was jailed in early 2021. His activism generated praise from around the world, and his life and work took center stage in the 2022 documentary Navalny, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before airing on CNN and winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the following year's Oscars ceremony.

"There's one person who couldn't be with us here tonight: Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, remains in solitary confinement for what he calls.... Vladimir Putin's unjust war of aggression in Ukraine," said director Daniel Roher as he accepted the Oscar on stage. "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."

The filmmaker then invited Yulia to speak on her spouse's behalf.

"My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy," she told attendees. "Alexei, I'm dreaming of the day when you will be free, and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love."

A year before the Academy Awards telecast, EW's Leah Greenblatt praised the cinematic portrait of Navalny as "a real-time thriller" with real-world implications.

"Toggling between a tenderly ordinary family life with the dissident's wife and two teenagers and the extraordinary perils of his political career — John le Carré would hardly have believed it, if he hadn't already written stuff just like it — Navalny has a bracing, heart-racing story to tell, even as the improbable facts rush past," Greenblatt wrote. "But it never fails to focus on the human man: funny, prickly, and unimaginably brave, down to the last defiant frame."

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Celebrity deaths 2024: Remembering the stars we've lost this year

• The White Lotus drops Miloš Biković after Ukraine accuses actor of supporting Russian invasion

• DWTS alum Maksim Chmerkovskiy escapes Ukraine for Poland after 31 hours of 'no sleep'

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.