Amongst the surprises and controversies accompanying the recipients of this year’s Oscar awards, a shy, unassuming young winner slipped under the radar. But his name, and the film he won an Oscar for, is worth bringing to the attention of the general public, and of teachers and parents in particular.
Pavel Talankin is a 35-year-old Russian educator, who briefly broke his cover from living in a secret location in Europe to collect his Oscar for Mr Nobody Against Putin, which won best documentary feature at Hollywood’s glamorous award ceremony. For nearly two years, Talankin filmed the vast changes in the school in which he taught during the period after Russia began its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.
“We all face a moral choice“
David Borenstein, the US co-director of Talankin’s film, said: “Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country … And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small … acts of complicity. When a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we could produce it and consume it – we all face a moral choice.”
Talankin said: “Parents didn’t really know what was being taught … Some people have written to me with gratitude, others have said we will break your knees next time we see you.”
In the aftermath of the film, officers from Russia’s FSB state intelligence agency were sent into the school. Talankin reports: “They gathered the school leadership together and said: ‘This person did not exist and does not exist, and you must not contact him; this film did not exist and does not exist, and you must make no comment on it.’”
“The most polluted town in Russia“
Talankin worked for a school in Karabash, which he describes in Mr Nobody as “the biggest school in a small town”. Karabash is a town of 10,000 people in the Ural mountain region of Russia, far away from any large cities. It was once a site of heavy industry, with a large copper smelting plant. Talankin says that UNESCO once called it the “most polluted town in Russia” and speculates whether, by implication, that means it is the most polluted town on Earth. “But it’s not so bad,” he concludes.
Talankin was born and raised in Karabash and once attended the school himself. His mother is the school librarian. He worked as the school videographer and events coordinator, working closely with the children, helping them to turn their ideas into films, podcasts, assemblies and celebrations.
From the evidence in Mr Nobody, his job appears to be a mixture of technician and facilitator. In carrying out his duties, he gets to know all the children (who appear to be aged approximately 6–18) very well. He says on camera that he sees his job as “to be there for the students, opening their minds, helping them to express themselves and to just be kids”.
He includes some old videos from 2005 at the start of Mr Nobody. During that year, I was teaching secondary/sixth form myself, and I was struck by the likeness of the teenagers shown on the film to those I remember – joyous, irreverent and cynical in turns, dressed and made-up in western fashions, listening to music on iPods, dancing around in their common room and in Talankin’s media room, which students can enter at any time, he explains, because he never locks it. Daringly, he keeps a Russian democracy protest flag stuck to his notice board.
The ‘special military operation’
In February 2022, shortly after Russian tanks began rolling towards Ukraine, the school received a new ‘federal patriotic education policy’ that the staff were ordered to apply. Talankin explains that, from that point, lessons and assemblies had to contain patriotic poetry, speeches and songs. He was ordered to film a selection of lessons, to send evidence to the government that the school was complying with the new curriculum.
Talankin’s opinion is clear: “It’s fucked up … we were not prepared for this intervention in our ability to teach.” Assembly now starts with the oldest children marching in with the Russian flag. Its name changes to ‘morning drill’. Scripted lessons arrive, with which the teachers are clearly uncomfortable. In one a teacher tells her class awkwardly that Ukrainians are radicals, nationalists and neo-Nazis, attacking “everything that unites us”.
There is one moment of levity when one of the teachers struggles to pronounce the Russian words for ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’. Talankin narrates that hours of his time that he used to use to plan for the children’s activities are now spent in “uploading videos to some mysterious government database”.
The seeds of rebellion
Borenstein and Talankin found each other through Instagram, where they eventually put a plan together for Talankin to supply some of his video footage to a western media company to splice together into a documentary. In the Mr Nobody footage, Talankin initially expresses bravado about his situation; but, as things develop, he becomes increasingly concerned for his own safety. His determination is, however, hardened by the behaviour of one member of staff, history teacher Abdulmanov, who, it becomes clear, is the Russian regime’s insider within the school.
Abdulmanov starts to lead the morning drills. He is filmed telling the children that Europe is greatly suffering from the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia, that the EU is desperately short of gas, oil and wheat, that in France a tank of petrol costs 150 euros, that in the US there are pro-Russia demonstrations, and that England is a tiny island which “killed their own people in World War II” (implied: they don’t care about the ‘hardship’ of their population). The children are told that Crimea was ‘liberated’ by the Russians in a ‘Crimean Spring’ initiative.
“He delivers the lessons with the passion of a true believer,” says Talankin to camera. Abdulmanov eventually takes charge of an ‘All Russian children’s movement’ to which all pupils are automatically enrolled. It mimics the ‘Soviet Pioneers’ of the previous century, but, says Talankin, “that organisation was loyal to communism … this one is loyal only to Putin and his aims”.
The toll of government pressure
Talankin films a staff meeting where the teachers are reprimanded because the academic achievements of the children have begun to fall. On film, the children are clearly becoming increasingly less carefree, and preoccupied by the war, as brothers and boyfriends are conscripted into the army. The curriculum at school constantly reminds them of their patriotic duty to denounce “spies and traitors”.
Talankin unloads his frustration on his mother and is cynically told to wise up because “people love war”. His anger further spikes as he tells his colleagues that the children’s grades are failing because of “all the bullshit” in the curriculum. His colleagues express tacit agreement and sympathy, laced with fear and awkwardness.
When Abdulmanov receives a ‘favourite teacher’ prize – a luxury flat in close proximity to the school – Talankin takes down the Russian flag on the school roof, white tapes X’s (a Ukrainian victory symbol) in the school windows, plays the US national anthem through the school speakers, and uses his universal remote to turn off a local Russian victory parade video he was forced to film, which is looping on screens in the town library front windows.
Exile
Talankin is gently admonished by the school principal for his antics. She makes it clear that although she understands his anger, he must stop doing these things, because all the staff will get into trouble, herself and Talankin in particular. The crime of treason has recently been redefined, and the penalties increased. When Talankin realises that he is being watched at school from a car parked in the grounds, he reluctantly decides it is time to ask his western contacts for extraction.
He filmed the graduation ceremony of summer 2024, and left the next day, purportedly for a week’s holiday in Turkey, his video cards hidden in his luggage. He was then met by his European contacts in Turkey and taken to an undisclosed place of safety.
The resulting film was released onto BBC4 in October 2025, and the rights to screening in the US were acquired in January 2026. Mr Nobody Against Putin subsequently won the 2025 Oscar for best documentary on 15 March 2026.
In the same month, the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights appealed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and UNESCO claiming that the documentary “may violate the rights of minors because it includes footage of schoolchildren used without parental consent [in possible contravention of] … child-protection standards”.
Whose moral challenge?
Many in the west will feel they are at a safe distance from Talankin’s experience of being “trapped as a pawn of the regime”. However, following events in the US over the last 15 months, perhaps they might take time to contemplate whether they can empathise with Talankin’s comment that “one idiot decides to do this, now the whole world is afraid … it’s like you are in a room and … the air is running out”.
With regard to a politically imposed curriculum, England has some experience with this, from Michael Gove’s ideological curriculum of ‘hard facts’. This has still not been entirely expunged, despite the new government’s best intentions to revamp it, in order to:
“reflect our diverse society and the contributions of people of all backgrounds to our knowledge and culture [including] … stronger representation of the diversity that makes up our modern society, allowing more children to see themselves in the curriculum”.
The fact that this is necessary in the nation that is recognised as the home of the ‘mother of parliaments’ should surely give us cause to stop and think about the fragility of our democracy.
The creeping erosion of democracy
I also write as a Briton who, under the last government, had the unsettling experience of being listed by the Department of Education as one of a number of education professionals and academics who had made ‘dissident’ posts on social media.
Of course, British teachers have not yet been put into the position of Pavel Talankin. If they were, I hope that some would find the courage to respond as he did. But I am also mindful that the schools inspection process (which has as yet not been effectively refreshed by the current government) still places huge pressure on teachers to slavishly comply with a monolithic curriculum, driving many to despair.
Democracy is not a natural societal situation; it is one that every member of society must work for, and educate their children about. Pavel Talankin has more than done his duty in this respect, explicitly defining his model of patriotism in Mr Nobody as being brave enough to “speak up when we have a problem”. His is a model that every person in a western democracy might use to reflect on their own behaviour, in these very difficult times for the whole world, and ask themselves ‘have I played my part?‘
The experience of Pavel Talankin demonstrates that every Mr Nobody may get an opportunity to be Mr/Ms Somebody, given the times in which we now live.
Mr Nobody Against Putin is currently available on BBC iPlayer.
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