From elementary school teacher in Karabash, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia (near the northern border of Kazakhstan), to Academy Award recipient at Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, is one giant step for a self-described “Mr. Nobody.” But Pavel (“Pasha”) Talankin just made that leap.

Once a student at Karabash Primary School No. 1, where his mother worked as school librarian, Pasha later returned there as a teacher and the school’s videographer — by all accounts, a very normal, contented life.

But in 2022, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and to support his “special military operation” — in truth, nothing more than an illegal land grab — he began a massive propaganda program throughout the country, focusing heavily on the population’s most vulnerable: the children. The official curriculum in the country’s schools was changed to require “patriotic” teaching, including references to the war as the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.

But Pavel Talankin couldn’t accept the lies. He continued filming school programs as usual, though under new instructions to delete any material that might reveal the nature and extent of the Soviet-style curriculum. And he began secretly making duplicate, unedited videos of classes, pro-war student assemblies — even including weapons training by the infamous paramilitary Wagner Group. He found a way to send the unedited videos out of the country to an American man he had met online, filmmaker David Borenstein, who became his co-director and worked with him remotely from Europe for two years.

Those films ultimately became the documentary, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” And on Sunday, Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein took home Oscars.

Pasha eventually had to flee Russia, leaving behind his mother, his friends, his students, and a job that he once loved. As Borenstein explained:

“When Pasha picked up the camera, it was because he felt he was trapped in this Kafkaesque system. He says it in the film: ‘Being a propagandist at this school is like walking a tightrope.’” [Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News, March 16, 2026.]

He booked a supposed vacation in Turkey, and never returned home. He is currently living in an undisclosed location somewhere in Europe.

Before flying to Los Angeles, Pavel gave an interview on CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” in London, in which he said:

“When the teacher had to say Ukraine had taken the path of neo-Nazism and neo-fascism, and we must ‘liberate’ it, at that moment I understood that I had no moral right to delete this material, because it is part of the evidence of what’s happening in Russian schools today.” [Id.]

Asked if he believed Russian authorities had become suspicious of him, Pavel replied:

“Sometimes I thought so. In Russia you never know. No one will call you; no one will knock on your door. They just watch, and then suddenly break the door down, throw you on the floor, and the floor is the last thing you see in your apartment. That’s it; you don’t exist anymore.” [Id.]

The Kremlin claims they’ve been too busy to watch the film. Translation: they’ve seen it, and haven’t yet decided what to do about it.

But Pavel’s mother, who appears in the film, has seen it. She even gave an interview to the New York Times in which she expressed her pride in her son. Conscience and courage obviously run in the family.

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Like the samizdat of Soviet times, Pavel Talankin’s film is a vital means of getting out to the world the truth of life in Putin’s Russia. He expresses his fear for the future of the children he left behind:

“This is a very important document, because it shows what Russian society will be like in a few years. Putin may no longer exist, but society will be evil, because propaganda entered schools and was taught to children.” [Id.]

In response to a question, he said that he feels “probably 80 percent safe” from retribution, but that:

“It’s also, to me, a story about resistance. Everybody faces a moral choice wherever you are, and this is a story also about what you do when there is a government around you tearing down everything that you have built up.” [Id.]

And when his co-director David Borenstein accepted his Oscar, he had this to add:

“‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage, it’s that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity, when we act complicit, 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 can produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.” [Id.]

Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein — two “Mister Somebodies,” whose courage and conviction stand as a shining example to us all.

Congratulations, and thank you!

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/17/26