‘Navalny’ doc at Sundance hits Putin where it hurts

Broadcast and cable networks have news teams in place in Ukraine as attention focuses on the possibility of an invasion, perhaps as soon as this week.

Alex Salmond should stop being Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiot” and abandon his show on the Moscow-funded RT television channel, the Scottish Lib Dems have declared.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping helps open the Winter Games in Beijing on Friday, dozens of world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also are expected to attend.

What do you have to say to the Russian people in the event of your death? Filmmaker Daniel Roher (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band,”) asks his subject, political Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny, at the beginning of his engrossing new doc “Navalny.” “C’mon,” Navalny scoffs, dismissively, as if highly attuned to Roher’s “gotcha” question he could frame posthumously in the case of the political agitator’s untimely death.

Directed by Paula Eislet and Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike Lee’s producer and partner), the documentary “Aftershock” chronicles the dismal maternal mortality rate that women of color face in the United States medical system. The statistics are shameful, pointing to a systemic racist indifference, and the documentary chronicles the staggering number of times that expectant mothers entering into hospitals simply do not come out alive due to a lack of care and sensitivity.

TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.

Members of the region’s Ukrainian community are “terrified” over the threat of a Russian invasion of their homeland.

NEW YORK -- Within hours of Russian authorities officially adding Alexei Navalny to the country’s registry of terrorists and extremists, a new documentary about the imprisoned Russian opposition leader premiered at the Sundance Film Festival."Navalny” was dramatically added to the festival at the last minute, and announced just the day before it premiered virtually Tuesday evening at Sundance. Directed by Daniel Roher, the film was made with Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, in late 2020 and early 2021 while he recuperated in Germany after an attempted assassination with nerve agent poisoning.Navalny has said the Kremlin was responsible, as have American intelligence officials and media reports that traced the agents who attacked Navalny to Russia's Federal Security Service.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival obviously has so much to offer. Big premieres from indie auteurs, world cinema, documentaries, films for kids, and movies that are receiving so much acclaim right now, you’ll be hearing more from them later in the year upon regular theatrical release.