On March 16, the United States will host the Oscars ceremony, where Mr. Nobody Against Putin is nominated for Best Documentary Feature. The film, which has already received a special prize at Sundance and a BAFTA, follows Pavel Talankin, a school staff member and videographer from Karabash, who watched his provincial school turn into a vehicle for patriotic propaganda after the start of the full-scale war.
Talankin recorded what was happening on camera: the “Important Conversations” classes, appearances by Wagner mercenaries, history lessons about “Nazis in Ukraine,” and the reactions of teachers and children. He later left Russia and took the archive with him, which became the basis of the documentary.
David Borenstein told Novaya Gazeta Europe that he learned about Talankin through a letter sent in response to a Russian open call about how the war had changed people and their work. In that letter, Talankin wrote that he was effectively being turned into a propagandist. According to the director, the text was passed from person to person until it reached him through intermediaries.
“Propaganda in Russia is not trying to persuade you. It wants to break you,” Borenstein said, summing up the conclusion he reached while comparing the Russian case with his long study of Chinese propaganda.
The director said he initially had no idea Talankin possessed years of footage from inside the school and gradually realized that he was not just the subject but a full co-director. Both men are credited as directors, while the screenplay is credited to Borenstein because he assembled the final narrative from long conversations and many hours of footage.
He said the film’s structure was heavily shaped by security concerns: the authors deliberately limited material involving other people because they could not expose them to additional risk or assume they could leave Russia. Borenstein acknowledged that this affected the picture presented on screen, but said the film still accurately reflects the atmosphere of apathy and alienation he found in the raw recordings.
Responding to criticism that the film seems to present emigration as the only form of resistance, the director said it tells only one person’s subjective story. He stressed that other forms of resistance exist inside Russia and that the film was intended to show the country’s complexity rather than reinforce a simplified, demonizing view of Russians.