2026 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, takes an inside look at the educational system of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
One would be hard-pressed to find a more unassuming dissenter than Pavel Talankin. As an educator, events coordinator, and videographer for a small town primary school in Russia, Talankin is young, bespectacled, cheerfully nerdy, and in no way physically imposing. He’s not even a man who is comfortable with the idea of dissenting. But his basic core of decency won’t allow him to be anything other than a rebel against President Vladimir Putin and his regime.
Talankin had been living a quiet life in Karabash, a place so polluted by the local copper mine that the mountain overlooking the town of 10,000 has gone black, and the local life expectancy is a medieval 38. His peaceful, if environmentally unhealthy, life changed in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Schools across the country were ordered to follow a patriotic education policy, requiring lessons, sing-alongs, and morning drills as part of the indoctrination. Initially, Talankin resigns rather than support Russia’s propaganda machine. Then, Talankin connected with filmmaker David Borenstein, who was seeking subjects to collect and submit evidence and information to him for a documentary about the goings-on inside Russia. Talankin rescinds his resignation, and he and Borenstein’s work together became Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
Talankin is Mr. Nobody.
The documentary begins ominously in 2024 with Talankin planning his escape from his homeland. The film then leaps back to the time before the education order took effect. For a brief period of time, Mr. Nobody Against Putin turns cheerful, jaunty even. Then the invasion. Talankin finds himself in the minority among his fellow staff. While other instructors don’t necessarily want to introduce the new curriculum, they sigh and comply. At least one peer, History teacher Mr. Abdulmanov, a cadaverous man in appearance, who looks like what happens to the body once the soul vacates the premises, is all too eager to peddle the Putin party line. There is a short collage of educator compliance in the film that would be laughable if not for the repercussions.
Over 90 gently paced minutes, Mr. Nobody Against Putin reveals the profound loneliness of the whistleblower. Unlike the brilliant Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, which covered the plight of the high-profile anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny, Talankin and Borenstein’s film (they are credited as co-directors) is an exposé on the quiet resistance of the “small” but necessary person. A person whose actions may lack flair, but are revolutionary in their own right, because in the darkest of times, decency in action is a rebellion all its own.
I would guess that Talankin didn’t and doesn’t see himself in heroic terms, but he is. He is a man who is afraid. Very afraid. But he does it anyway. He is a person who creeps towards revolutionary acts, not with a torch or saber in his hand, but with a camera. Talankin records, documents, and exposes. He makes a choice and uses a device that, in the process, resonates far beyond Russia’s borders, all the way to middle America, to a place called Minneapolis. Putin’s loyalty test is not one of fealty to the government or the ideal of communism, but to himself—a standard that rings true in this country as well.
The danger in the film isn’t just to Talankin or any fellow educator who might resist the curriculum; it also comes home to young men who are former students of the primary school. A number of them get conscripted to serve in the Russia/Ukraine War. In the film’s most harrowing moment, Talankin stealthily records the audio of a funeral for a friend. I say stealthily, because in Russia, it is illegal to record audio or video of the funeral of a Russian soldier. The screen may go dark, but the cries and wails of the fallen soldier’s mother are all too vivid. That moment can be grimly juxtaposed with a sequence in the film of Russian military personnel presenting students with awards for winning a grenade-throwing contest. We also see Russian soldiers getting a pep talk of sorts that begins with “All of you will die.” The young men of Russia are nothing more than cannon fodder in the Putin Regime.
Late in the film, Putin unilaterally sets a new standard for treason, putting Talankin at even greater risk. The price of freedom and safety for Talankin is to leave the only place he’s ever known behind. “I love my job, but I don’t want to be a pawn of the regime,” Talankin says early in Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Talankin also states that he loves everything about the toxic town of Karabash. He even loves the pipes that carry the copper from the mines, which poison the townsfolk and leave stains on the town’s buildings. After all, it is (and now was) his home.
What is most unexpected about Talankin and Borenstein’s film is what it becomes by the time it closes: a sad love story of Talankin’s affection for his vocation, his students, his fellow educators, and Russia as well. Through Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Talankin reveals what love of country and its people really means: It means telling the truth, no matter the cost.
