Citizen K (2019)

Directed by: Alex Gibney | 126 minutes | documentary

Citizen K is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian dissident in English exile and the main talking head in this Alex Gibney documentary. This prolific American has previously made documentaries about the Church of Scientology, Lance Armstrong and Wikileaks. We didn’t know him well, but it’s not unlikely that financier Amazon saw potential in this later winner of a Writer’s Guild Award (not for this print, by the way).

‘Citizen K’ is a decent documentary, with roaring violins as if it were CNN and a little too much Derk Sauer with his ruminating English. In addition to Khodorkovsky, who lives in London, Gibney also got presidential candidate Navalny in front of the camera, for which tribute. But ‘Citizen K’ does not yield much startling for the good newspaper reader. Two hours without real development and structure, with a summary of the facts since the end of the Soviet Union, here and there a bio; it is.

Putin’s rule is state capitalism, all say. Not an unimportant story of course, and presented in a bite-sized manner despite the length. Khodorkovsky was one of the brightest businessmen after the fall of the Soviet Union, made immensely rich with oil company Yukos and around 2003 one of the biggest critics of President Putin in the Duma. At a time when “half the parliament” was on Khodorkovsky’s payroll, the latter was arrested after accusing Putin himself of corruption. Result: 10 years in Siberia and nationalization of his company.

Not a nice guy either, but this is the man who preaches democratic values ​​from London, and is fairly put on a pedestal by Gibney. Khodorkovsky has matured in prison, and his greed, in his own words, has given way to ‘being’; It is also nice to see images of the Russian elections that reveal how populist Putin’s politics is, and what play is hidden behind it, but wha