Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Saturday March 7 @ 1:30 pm

Documentary
1 hr 30 min – Not Rated – Released 2025

Working from Pavel “Pasha” Talankin‘s first-hand footage, Mr Nobody Against Putin director David Borenstein exposes the Russian government’s extreme tactics to indoctrinate young students before shipping them off to the front lines. With the snappy casualness of a “day in the life” vlog, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a charismatic Russian teacher who serves as planner and videographer for all of his school’s events, introduces us to his peculiar small town: Karabash. Known as the most toxic place on Earth due to a copper smelting plant, here the average life expectancy is 38 and cancer affects the population disproportionally. It’s in this maligned place that Pasha has built a safe haven with his classroom, fostering friendships between students and pushing them to explore their creativity. Pasha works in the same school he attended and where his mother still works as a diligent librarian. Teaching couldn’t be more personal for him. Thus, when President Putin’s unchecked propaganda antics threaten his noble efforts, he springs into action.

Teachers and educators are vital to the ecosystem of society. They prepare children and teach them to become adults, educating them about history, social sciences, and languages, giving them everything they need before letting them go out in the world. So what happens when teachers are compromised by the government? What happens when a teacher must follow a strict curriculum laden with political propaganda? What happens when a country’s government decides to tell its people lies and indoctrinate the young in order to push them to enlist and join the army of one of the bloodiest European wars since World War II? In Mr. Nobody Against Putin, we follow Pasha Talankin as he witnesses his small town in the Ural Mountains change as the invasion of Ukraine changes the school he teaches at into something he doesn’t recognize.

Almost exclusively assembled from footage Pasha himself captured, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, from director David Borenstein (Talankin is credited as co-director), chronicles the disturbing militarization of Russian schools in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Through the eyes of its delightfully brave, yet utterly relatable subject (also the de facto cinematographer), this terrifying, revelatory and poignant exposé offers an unseen human angle on an ongoing conflict that’s continues to be widely addressed in documentary cinema. Orders have come from Putin’s government to ditch regular lessons. Teachers must now read from approved materials, claiming that Ukraine is run by radicals and that Russia’s enemies are trying to destabilize the country by hiring locals as disruptors. Outside of the school’s premises, pro-war rallies evoke the same brainwashed atmosphere as MAGA demonstrations stateside. As someone whose job already involves holding a camera and filming everything relevant occurring inside the school, Pasha partners with artists outside his home country and begins shooting with the intent of divulging the takeover of education. Speaking directly to the camera, the teacher turned filmmaker also records unguarded confessionals. He saves his most dejected thoughts for these solitary sessions.

To keep shooting, Pasha must suppress his rage and only dares to carry out small protests — such as playing the U.S. national anthem sung by Lady Gaga — but those are enough to earn him suspicion. In their collaboration, the filmmakers succeed at exemplifying the impact of the Kremlin’s decisions through the lens of Pasha’s daily interactions inside a single school. When Putin passes a law that will sentence anyone deemed a “traitor to the motherland” to life in prison, the stakes of Pasha’s incognito mission gain alarming significance. Images of the leader making outrageous statements are interspersed throughout, not only to provide context but for the doc to make good on its title: Putin feels like Pasha’s direct adversary, the embodiment of what he’s fighting against.

Pasha is a keen observer and through his eyes, we meet the significant figures around his small town, the people who play an important part in his story. Some of his students, like Masha, a young girl whose brother is fighting in the war, we see slowly wilt over the two years that Pasha documents the events. As the war progresses and truths are hidden from the public, these young people who have been taught to be open-minded and curious are being met with the ugliest side of the real world.

For others, like Pasha’s coworker and the school’s history teacher, Pavel Abdulmanov, we watch as they thrive under the new propaganda orders from the Kremlin. Introduced as a stick-in-the-mud, Pavel’s lectures are unenthusiastic, and the guy idolizes Stalin’s KGB chief (the father of the gulag if you’re curious), Stalin’s spy hunter, and his assassin as historical figures. It would all be funny if he wasn’t molding the minds of children. It is both a first-person testimony and a character-driven story of resistance. Through Talankin’s experience, the film captures the growing impact of state propaganda on children and youth, as it indoctrinates them with resentment against the West, among others, even though it is clear that they don’t grasp the basics of geopolitics.