The film “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” created by American director David Borenstein and videographer Pavel Talankin from the Ural city of Karabash, has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Accepting the award, Talankin spoke in Russian. “For four years we have looked up at the starry sky and made the most important wish. A very important wish. But there are countries where, instead of shooting stars, bombs fall from the sky and drones fly overhead. For the sake of our future, for the sake of all our children, let us stop all wars. Now,” he said from the stage.
In his speech, director David Borenstein noted that the film tells the story of how a country can be lost gradually—through countless small acts of complicity. “‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is a film about how a country can be lost. As we worked with this footage, we saw that it can be lost through innumerable small acts of complicity. When we become accomplices, when the government kills people in the streets of our major cities, when we say nothing, when oligarchs seize the media and control our production and consumption, we all face a moral choice. But fortunately, even ‘nobody’ can be far stronger than you think,” he said.
Before the Oscars, the film had already received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Documentary.
Pavel Talankin worked as a videographer at a school in the city of Karabash. After the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he began filming everything taking place at the school—from ceremonial assemblies and meetings to festive events and lessons whose recording was required by the Ministry of Education. In 2024, Talankin left Russia, taking all the recorded footage with him.