In the wave of documentaries about the Ukraine war that has come out in the last two years, there hasn’t been one that has offered what Daniel Borenstein’s “Mr. No one against Putin” does – and certainly not with such wit, gusto and insight: The View Inside Russia.
Borenstein is the credited director, but the film itself was largely played by Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a guy with a cheeky grin and a free-spirited flair who worked as a videographer and event coordinator at Karabash Primary School #1. Karabash is a small town of 10,000 in the Ural Mountains, which visitors have tried to paint as the “most polluted city in the world” because of its copper smelter which one observer says has resulted in the town’s population having an average life expectancy of 38. “It isn’t that bad,” Pasha says in his voiceover right after that. And just as much of film that follows is about highlighting the dark turn Russia has taken since the Ukraine war — especially when it comes to indoctrinating its children — it’s also a sly message to the West: Russians don’t think alike, and they don’t all live in grinding, squalid conditions.
Since Talankin shot nearly all of the footage in his role as the school’s videographer himself, he has been credited as DP (and as co-director) for “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” And while he aims for the kind of nuance the West doesn’t usually see in depictions of Russia, he is clear-eyed about the total descent into totalitarianism that the country has experienced since the tumultuous 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 connection to the students there that suggests 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 a K-12). And then suddenly, in February 2022, they are called “from above” to start organizing patriotic displays and singing hymns about the motherland. It’s both about indoctrinating the students and making sure school staff are willing to indoctrinate the students when ordered so the government knows the adult population is falling in line (which priority is more important is unclear, although we know even in the US, as seen in the documentary “The Librarians”, that nefarious political actors believe that indoctrinating children will help achieve future goals). Pasha must then upload all the patriotic videos to a mysterious government website.
From that point on, each school day begins with a “presentation of the colors” ceremony that requires the children to march in military style. “Are we completely fucked?” Pasha asks his supervisor when the order will start doing this. “Fuck! It hurts!” Suddenly the class lectures are 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 which most American viewers watching this will be inclined to think of as similar to the Hitler Youth).
The way Pasha shows us that these things are added to the curriculum, it is clear that it was not always this way. Russians have a greater diversity of thought regarding Putin and the Ukraine war than is commonly recognized in the West. And this very slide into totalitarianism is a fairly recent development (giving hope that it could be reversed). Putin probably felt it required more effort than any other attempt for Russia’s involvement in the wars in Syria and Chechnya to boost the propaganda effort for the Ukraine war, a war in which Russians may feel they are fighting their brothers and sisters.
There are definitely some true believers here. One teacher, Mr. Abdulmanov, wins an award for turning 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 others), as one of his personal heroes. Even Pasha’s mother, a librarian whom he clearly loves (though he says he has never told her), supports the war—though her justification is that “our people have always been involved in all battles” and that ” people love to shoot each other.”
Over time, Pasha makes contact on Instagram with a producer in the West who is interested in filming about how the war is communicated inside Russia. That’s probably how this resulting film came about. But Pasha also gets it into his head to start subverting the daily propaganda at the school, which could make him a target even before he delivers the footage he’s shot to the producer.
One day, Pasha even subverts the daily “procession of the colors” ceremony by replacing the Russian national anthem with Lady Gaga’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” noting in his voiceover that nothing could be more threatening to the regime than that fact that it was Gaga’s version. The Western perception might be that Pasha would be roused to a gulag as soon as he did, but nothing happens immediately. However, a police car is suddenly parked in front of his apartment building. And he knows he has to leave the country if he’s ever going to be able to share all the video footage he’s taken. There are times when Pasha laments what has happened here, though he immediately qualifies it by saying “of course, it’s not like what’s happening in Ukraine.” But even he mourns former students he knew who were appointed and sent to Ukraine and never returned.
When the school’s graduation ceremony finally arrives, Pasha uses the opportunity to give a speech that is both honoring the students and a statement about how much he himself has learned here – in hindsight, everyone would have recognized it as a farewell speech. And indeed, he escaped the next day.
Borenstein brought all this together into a film that is not only a revealing piece of journalism on Talankin’s part but a satisfying character study of an independent thinker suddenly confronted by totalitarianism. You’re rooting for Pasha so hard in all of this, even though, based on this movie’s existence and his retroactive voiceover, you know he has to be okay from the get-go. “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” is unique in handling serious issues of war and dehumanization with a light, even humorous, and certainly personality-filled, touch—in the heart-attack-serious war documentary landscape, it’s a unicorn. The fact that it leads to more empathy and understanding, and an ability to see ordinary Russians in a more human light, makes it both profound and engaging.
Grade: A-
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking distribution in the United States.
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