Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. BAFTA Award winner for Best Documentary. Pasha Talankin is an unlikely hero — a beloved Russian primary school teacher, known as a mentor and prankster who offers students a safe haven in his office. After Russia invades Ukraine, Pasha’s role in the school changes dramatically as he is reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine. Forced to promote state-sanctioned messages and horrified by the transformation of his school and community, he struggles with guilt and a sense of powerlessness, leading him to become an international whistleblower.
The result, featuring a copious voice-over by Talankin, is an exemplary work of cinematic modernism, a reflexive film that turns its genesis into its subject and its moral essence. -The New Yorker
One of its more quietly revelatory qualities is how it captures the way authoritarianism accelerates during wartime. -Rogerebert.com
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. -Indiewire
An endearing, infuriating, and despairing non-fiction portrait of a country’s final descent into oppressive authoritarianism, all of it shot covertly by one brave teacher, it’s a striking work of rebel cinema. -The Daily Beast
His principled resistance by filming, joking and refusing to teach lies makes for a riveting, courageous portrait of dissent in a place where truth can land you in jail — or a cemetery. -Toronto Star
NR, 90min
