Mr Nobody Against Putin, a primary school teacher’s record of the indoctrination of his pupils to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has won the Oscar for best documentary.
Pavel Talankin, who is now in exile in Europe, picked up the award alongside the film’s US co-director, David Borenstein. It beat favourite The Perfect Neighbor to take the prize, along with other contenders The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light and Cutting Through Rocks.
Borenstein began by thanking his family and friends, the Academy and their fellow nominees. “Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” he said. “And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless, small, little 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. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”
Talankin meanwhile issued a plea on behalf of the countries where “instead of shooting stars … they have shooting bombs and shooting drones.”
He concluded: “In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now.”
This is the third time this decade that a film critical of the Russian government has won the prize, following Navalny in 2023 and 20 Days in Mariupol in 2024. The Oscar last year was won by No Other Land, an Israeli-Palestinian co-production about the destruction of a Palestinian community on the West Bank.
Speaking to press backstage after his film’s win, Borenstein was more specific about the target of his speech. “One interesting thing about working with a team of Russians throughout this process has been my desire as an American to constantly compare the situation in America to Russia,” he said.
“But a lot of my Russian colleagues and friends always said, ‘No, no, it’s not the same situation. It’s actually happening quicker in America than it’s been happening in Russia.’ Trump is moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years.”
