His film ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is up for an Oscar — but its ethics are under scrutiny. Here’s what Pavel Talankin has to say.
On March 15, the Oscars will be held in Los Angeles. One of the nominees for Best Documentary Feature is “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” a film about wartime propaganda targeting schoolchildren in the central Russian town of Karabash. The movie has already won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2025 and the 2026 BAFTA for Best Documentary. But the more awards the film collects, the more criticism its creators face — none more than Pavel Talankin, its cameraman, narrator, central character, and co-director. Critics on social media have argued that those appearing in it didn’t know Talankin was shooting a documentary, and that showing their faces to the world puts them in danger. Anton Khitrov spoke with the former teacher about how he responds to the criticism, what his collaboration with Borenstein looked like, and how the project changed his life.
— Have you written your Oscars speech yet?
— No, not yet.
— I imagine this must you must a very strange chapter of your life.
— Not strange, but unusual. Unexpected for me. I wasn’t prepared for anything like this. But I’m dealing with it, I think. Sometimes I wake up and don’t remember where I am. Not just what building I’m in or what bed, but even in what country — or what my plans are for the day. I constantly have the feeling that I slept through something.
— My main takeaway from the film is that you show propaganda as being 90 percent awkward theater and 10 percent the work of true enthusiasts like your history teacher Abdulmanov. Both groups seem like fairly ordinary people, not especially repulsive, but what they produce is terrible.
— I wouldn’t say that 90 percent don’t believe in the propaganda. But in fact it doesn’t matter whether they believe it or not. I’ll quote someone — a teacher who worked in Moscow. He watched the film and found the right words: “First it becomes routine [for teachers and children], then it becomes culture, and then it becomes a cage.”
But I’d add something to that — I don’t know if I have the right or not — the cage is actually left open. You can walk out of it at any moment. If you want to, you leave. But when you step outside, you realize you’re alone. Everyone else is still in cages. And that’s also the job of propaganda: not just to put everyone in a cage, but to convince you that dissent isn’t supported — that if something happens, you’ll be alone.
— Do you feel alone?
— I think so, yes. It feels almost like nothing has changed. I just moved from internal exile to external exile. Before, I could speak, but there was no one to speak to. Now there are people to speak to — but I can’t.
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— Are you referring to the language barrier?
— The language barrier too, yes.
— When you lived in Russia, did you have an idea of how many people in the West believed in Russian propaganda?
— I don’t know anything about that. There are people in the West who believe Russian propaganda? Although actually, wait. We had a showing in Los Angeles, and one woman came up to me. She had a piece of A4 paper and she started reading out takes from it that [pro-war Russian] Z-bloggers had written: “You’re a traitor, you contaminated them, you stole their childhood.” Other audience members started telling her, “Be quiet, we can’t listen to you anymore, just ask him a question, and that’s it.” She repeated: “Why did you take down the flag? Why did you throw down the flag?” I told her, “You can go and pick it up. Nine Metallurgov Boulevard — go put it back up.”
— What did you think documentary filmmaking was like before you became a director? And what did you learn about it while making the film?
— Before, I mostly watched historical documentaries. I’ve thought a bit about this, actually. In Russia, documentary film isn’t a very popular art form. In the West it is — in Denmark, for example, documentaries play in theaters alongside Spider-Man or Superman. People go, the halls are full — not just at festivals.
I thought, why doesn’t this work in Russia? And it’s because, for us, this niche is already filled by reality TV. Television killed documentary film in Russia, if you can put it that way. Or not documentary film itself, but people’s demand for it.
— Is there some issue connected to this art form that you’d like to understand better? People are constantly debating the ethics of documentaries — the line between documentary and journalism, between documentary and fiction.
— I understand the question, but I haven’t really thought about it. I was more interested in how the whole industry works. What producers do, what sponsors do. I studied at the Chelyabinsk Academy of Culture and Arts, in the film and TV directing department. I’ll tell you: what they taught us and how things work in practice — it’s night and day.
— Have you read discussions about your film on social media? You’re being criticized not only by supporters of the war but also by its opponents.
— People have told me about that. I haven’t read [the criticism] myself. One journalist said to me: “I watched your film, opened Facebook, and couldn’t find a single positive comment.” That surprised me. She said, “I’ll send them to you.” I opened it and closed it right away. I didn’t read them. Because some of the people writing them are people I respect.
Some of my students have sent me those comments too — my former students. People accuse me of being insincere. How can you accuse someone you don’t know of being insincere? I don’t know why this happens, but it’s good. People are talking about the film — for better or for worse. Indifference would hurt more.
— The most common criticism is that the people in your film — including the children — didn’t consent to being filmed for a documentary and didn’t know what was happening. They thought you were filming for a report.
— That’s exactly what it was: a report.
— At first, yes. But later you were making a film.
— I answered your question. It’s a report.
— A report to whom?
— To the future. It’s a video report. The time will come when we’ll ask: “How did it happen that an entire generation became angry and aggressive?” And I’ll say: “Here — the report exists. It was published long ago. This is how it happened.”
— What was your collaboration with David Borenstein like?
— He recommended some films for me to watch. He said, “You’re shooting everything in the first person — watch these, they’re done the same way.” I didn’t do it. I said, “Okay, send the list,” but I didn’t watch anything. I was afraid of repeating something someone else had done.
One thing I accepted reluctantly was the video diaries. I still don’t like them. David spent three days persuading me to keep them. Of course we had disagreements. Some things I defended, some I couldn’t.
— What did you manage to defend?
— The script. David gave me a voice-over he had written. I said, “No, my friend, this won’t work. I would never say that. I don’t think that way. Let’s rewrite it.” So we rewrote it.
Or the scene with the teachers where they say, “Our students’ performance is declining.” He wanted to cut that scene from the film. I don’t remember exactly why — probably security concerns. But I insisted it had to stay.
— Why?
— Because schools in Russia were and still are closed institutions. You can’t just walk in with a camera and film there. And if you do film, you’ll only hear what they’re told to say. Teachers won’t admit that academic performance is falling.
On the hard drive I smuggled out of the country, there was another scene that didn’t make it into the film. It was a school-wide parents’ meeting the day after that teachers’ meeting. The vice principal came out and said: “Everything is fine. Your children are doing great, studying well. Yes, there are problems, but nothing serious — performance is improving.” Even though among themselves they were saying the opposite.
I told David: “In Russian schools, this is how it works. No one will ever say a problem out loud. And when this film comes out, people will argue about it, it won’t go unnoticed. People in Russia will talk about it, I’m sure. And this is the first and last chance for both me and those teachers to say that performance is declining.”
— Is there anything you would do differently now?
— There’s a section in the film about repressions against people accused of treason. In that part we mention [exiled Russian opposition politician] Vladimir Kara-Murza. And I told David: “Everyone already knows about him. Let’s talk instead about teachers or children who ended up in serious situations, even criminal cases.”
But we would have had to build a documentary base, and we were already short on time. He said we didn’t have time for that. Later someone told me that at least their names could have appeared in the credits. I didn’t even think of that while we were making the film.
— What happened to the people in the film after we last see them?
— A year ago, when the film came out, FSB officers came to the school. They said: “This person never existed, this film never existed. You do not comment on this film. You do not call this person or correspond with him.”
So now I only talk to my colleagues on birthdays. I call or write, we speak for a minute — and that’s it.
As for the kids, some are still studying, some went to university. In general, everything is fine. I still talk to my mom too. At first, the news of the film was painful for her, but I think now she’s even proud of it.
Interview by Anton Khitrov