When “Navalny” won the 2023 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Colorado film producer Shane Boris imagined a far different sequel to the story.

Alexei Navalny, the most potent voice in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, died this week in a maximum-security prison camp, according to numerous news reports. He was 47.

“This is a strange moment because we always knew this was one possibility,” Boris told the Denver Gazette, “but we also never believed it could happen.”

Navalny had survived an attempted assassination by poisoning. Yet he voluntarily returned to his homeland in 2021, knowing full-well he would be immediately put into prison. There, he suffered and served as a powerful inspiration to anti-corruption activists and freedom fighters throughout the world.

“We thought the sequel would be five, 10, 15 years later,” said Boris, a 2000 graduate of Colorado Academy. “Putin would be out of power, Alexei would run in a free and fair election, he would come to power and we would show him the film for the first time – because he has never seen it before.

“And now that is impossible.”

But what is possible, Boris added, “is for us to continue to be present with the emerging leaders of the Russian opposition – because they exist – and help them tell their story. And help to tell the stories of people who are fighting against those who are trying to come to power and would install anti-democratic governments in our country and in countries around the world.”

Boris was having a restless night in Los Angeles and woke at 4 in the morning “with hundreds of messages,” he said. Soon after he was called by “Navalny” director Daniel Roher. “I went over to his house and we just consoled each other and tried to figure out what we have to do.”

The award-winning documentary follows Navalny through his political rise and assassination attempt. The film team, Boris said, “is going to continue to tell Alexei’s story in whatever way we can.” That might not be in the form of another film, but “we are committed to making sure that what he had to say is amplified throughout the world,” he said. “There’s also a sense that we would be doing him and his legacy and his memory a disservice by not continuing on.”

Boris was in contact with Navalny’s wife, Yulia, just a few weeks ago, and this morning he sent a message of consolation to her in Munich. “I just said, ‘There are no words, only pain, and I’m here for you for whatever you need,’” he said. “There’s nothing else that can be said right now. The personal loss is just so tragic.”

The message now, he said, shifts to the next wave of opposition.

“Alexei says it himself in the film: ‘The only thing that allows evil to exist is the inaction of good people.’ We have to continue to stand up for what we believe in, and we simply cannot let authoritarian and anti-democratic rulers continue to remain in power – or to assume more power.

“There’s an election in Russia next month, and Alexei called for everyone who is against the (Ukraine) war to show up at the same time – at noon on March 17. And I think we have to take similar actions all over the world. We have to show up and vote and fight against these assaults on democracy.”

The documentary shows Navalny coming to his fateful decision to return to Russia. If it were his place, Boris said he would have counseled Navalny “to make the best decision for himself, for his family, and for the cause he was so committed to fighting for.

“But at the end of the day, this is what he felt he needed to do, because it was worth the risk for the possibility of overthrowing Putin and having a chance to run himself in a free election.

“I think he saw that the movement was bigger than himself, and that if he were to be in prison, that would mean that the Russian government was afraid and that his movement would grow and be stronger, and he had to prove that with his body and with his family and with everything that he had.”

The film captures Navalny in his last moments of freedom shortly before Russian authorities took him into custody. “This is my home,” he says. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Navalny” is available for streaming on HBO Max.