Antidote review – gripping study of dissidents and whistleblowers in Putin’s crosshairs

Christo Grozev, forced to flee Austria for his journalistic investigation of secret Russian operations, is the central focus of a dynamic and powerful story

Finally getting a release after the verdict in the Bulgarian spy-ring trial, James Jones’s gripping documentary takes open-source journalism website Bellingcat’s former lead investigator Christo Grozev as its main focus. But Grozev is just one of the many in Putin’s crosshairs, so the film opens out to cover several whistleblowers, dissidents and activists. Hopping between location-stamped world cities like a Hollywood thriller, the film has a Michael Mann-like dynamism and pathos in detailing the emotional cost of this defiance.

After identifying hitmen and helping a whistleblower from Russia’s chemical weapons programme to flee to Europe, Grozev finds himself on a kill-list. Warned of an imminent threat, he is unable to return home to Vienna; exiled in New York, he impotently frets about his family’s safety. His doctor points out that, where most people’s stress levels fluctuate, his are unwaveringly high – even when asleep. His situation is better, though, than his friend Alexei Navalny or fellow dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, both in Russian detention in 2023; Grozev is involved in attempts to negotiate prisoner swaps for both.