On March 11, Odessa Rae met Yulia Navalnaïa in a large European city that she preferred not to name, for security reasons. The producer of the film Navalny, by Daniel Roher, Oscar for best documentary in 2023, had not yet seen the Russian opponent since the death of her husband, Alexeï Navalny, in a Russian prison on February 16. That day, the two forty-year-olds, who became close during filming, in 2021, plan to share tea before going to dinner with mutual friends. “We also talked at length about the strategy to adopt for the future,” describes Odessa Rae, by telephone, in the back of a car driving in the Swiss mountains.
Less than a month earlier, on February 19, Yulia Navalnaïa announced that she would continue her husband’s fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
To accompany this new status of opponent, her friend denies a role of “advisor” with the widow, while confessing that she “suggests” ideas to keep the memory of this alive “fearless leader”. Thanks to her numerous contacts, particularly in Hollywood, the producer plans communication operations, media interventions or even the organization of events in tribute to Alexeï Navalny. “I relay all opportunities that can help the cause, specifies Odessa Rae. I also consider myself partly a member of Team Navalny. »
Through her films, the former Canadian actress, now based in New York, finds herself at the center of world geopolitics. In addition to promoting Navalny, Odessa Rae is currently touring festivals with Hollywoodgate, a documentary directed by Ibrahim Nash’at, which followed two senior officers of the Taliban regime for a year, in a former CIA military base in Kabul, after the hasty departure of American forces in August 2021. At the same time, she completed the editing of a film on the Ukrainian government, which she followed for a year and a half after the Russian invasion, in February 2022.
An adolescence in Japan
Odessa Rae does not just produce stories: thanks to her address book, she, for example, arranged the exfiltration of the Afghan translator involved in the film Hollywoodgate, threatened by the Taliban regime, so that he could obtain political asylum in Germany.
More recently, like the famous Ukrainian producer Alexander Rodnianski, involved in the unofficial discussions between Russia and Ukraine, she acknowledges having played a role in the negotiations on a possible exchange of American prisoners in Russia which might have was able to free Alexeï Navalny before his death. This role, well beyond the simple work of producing a film, questions Odessa Rae: would she have become a character in the stories she tells? “I constantly walk a very fine line,” she admits.
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