‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin' Review: A Riveting Look Inside an Increasingly Totalitarian Russia
In the wave of documentaries about the Ukraine War that have come out over the past two years, there hasn't been one that's offered what David Borenstein's 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' does — and certainly not with such wit, verve, and insight: The view inside Russia.
Borenstein is the credited director, but the footage itself was largely shot by Pavel 'Pasha' Talankin, a guy with an impish grin and a freethinking sensibility who worked as a videographer and events coordinator at Karabash Primary School #1. Karabash is a small town of 10,000 in the Ural Mountains, which outside visitors have tried to paint as the 'most polluted town in the world' due to its copper smelting plant that one observer says has resulted in the town's population having an average life expectancy of 38. 'It's not so bad,' Pasha says in his voiceover right after that. And as much of the film that follows is about illuminating the dark turn Russia has taken since the Ukraine War — especially in terms of indoctrinating its children — it's also slyly a message to the West: Russians don't all think alike, and they don't all live in grinding, miserable conditions.
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Since Talankin shot almost all of the footage in his role as the school's videographer himself, he's credited as DP (and as co-director) of 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin.' And though he's aiming for the kind of nuance that the West doesn't typically see in depictions of Russia, he's clear-eyed about the all-out descent into totalitarianism the country has experienced since those harrowing days of February 2022, when Vladimir Putin began his 'special military operation' against Ukraine.
Not too many years removed from the school himself, Pasha has the kind of the connection with the students there indicative of someone who was a student there himself. We see him filming poetry readings and trying to shoot a music video with the older students (the school appears to be veritably a K-12). And then suddenly, in February 2022, they're asked 'from above' to start staging patriotic displays and the singing of anthems about the Motherland. It's about both indoctrinating the students, and making sure that the school staff are willing to indoctrinate the students when ordered so that the government knows the adult population is falling in line (which priority is more important is unclear, though we know even in the U.S., as seen in the documentary 'The Librarians,' that bad-faith political actors believe indoctrinating children will help achieve future goals). Pasha then has to upload all the patriotic videos to a mysterious government website.
From that point on, each schoolday begins with a 'presentation of the colors' ceremony that requires kids to do a military-style march. 'Are we completely fucked up?' Pasha asks his supervisor when the order comes down to start doing this. 'Fuck! It hurts!' Suddenly, class lectures are all about the need to 'demilitarize' and 'denazify' Ukraine. Assault rifle demonstrations are held. And younger students are encouraged to join a new 'patriotic' group that has its roots in the Soviet Pioneers (but that most U.S. viewers watching this will be inclined to think of as akin to the Hitler Youth).
The way that Pasha shows us these things being added to the curriculum, it's clear it wasn't always like this. Russians have a greater diversity of thought when it comes to Putin and the Ukraine War than is typically acknowledged in the West. And this particular slide into totalitarianism is a rather recent development (which gives one hope that it could be reversed). Presumably, Putin felt that ramping up the propaganda efforts for the Ukraine War, a war in which Russians might feel they are fighting against their brothers and sisters, required greater effort than anything attempted for Russia's involvement in the wars in Syria and Chechnya.
There are definitely some true believers here. One teacher, Mr. Abdulmanov, wins an award because he's turned his history class into a veritable daily propaganda lecture. When asked, he includes Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's NKVD head, and a notorious murderer and sexual predator (several children's skulls were found on his property, among those of others), as one of his personal heroes. Even Pasha's mother, a librarian who he clearly loves (though he says he's never told her), supports the war — even if her justification is that 'our people have always been involved in all the battles' and that 'people love shooting each other.'
Over time, Pasha makes contact on Instagram with a producer in the West who's interested in footage being taken about how the war's being communicated inside Russia. Presumably, that's how this resulting film came to be. But Pasha also gets it in his head to start subverting the day-to-day propaganda at the school, which could make him a target even before delivering the footage he's taken to the producer.
One day, Pasha even subverts the daily 'procession of the colors' ceremony by swapping out the Russian national anthem for Lady Gaga's rendition of the 'The Star Spangled Banner,' and in his voiceover notes that nothing could be more threatening to the regime than the fact it was Gaga's version. The Western view might be that Pasha would be spirited away to a gulag as soon as he did that, but nothing happens right away. There is a police car suddenly parked in front of his apartment block, however. And he knows that he'll have to leave the country if he's ever to share all the video footage he's taken. There are moments when Pasha laments what's happened here, even if he immediately qualifies it by saying 'of course, it's nothing like what's happening in Ukraine.' But even still, he grieves over former students he knew who've been drafted and sent to Ukraine and never returned.
When the school's graduation ceremony finally arrives, Pasha uses the occasion to deliver a speech that's both about honoring the grads and a statement about how much he himself has learned here — with hindsight everyone would have recognized it as a farewell speech. And indeed, he fled the next day.
Borenstein assembled all of this into a film that's not only a revealing bit of journalism on Talankin's part but a satisfying character study about an independent thinker suddenly faced with totalitarianism. You're rooting for Pasha so hard in all of this, even if, based on the existence of this film and his retroactive voiceover, you know from the very beginning he must be okay. 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' is unique in dealing with serious issues about war and dehumanization with a light, even humorous, and certainly personality-filled, touch — in the serious-as-a-heart-attack war documentary landscape, it is a unicorn. The fact that it leads to more empathy and understanding, and a capacity for seeing ordinary Russians in a more human light, makes it profound film as well as an engaging one.
'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' world premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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