The Oscar for Best Documentary Feature went to the film 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin,' created by American director David Borenstein and videographer Pavel Talankin from the Ural city of Karabash.
“For four years, we have been looking at the starry sky and making the most important wish. A very important wish. But there are countries where instead of falling stars, bombs fall from the sky and drones fly. In the name of our future, in the name of all our children, let’s stop all wars. Now,” said Talankin upon receiving the Oscar. The director spoke in Russian, writes Meduza.
“‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is a film about how a country can be lost. When we were working on this footage, we saw that it can be lost through countless small acts of complicity. When we become complicit, when the government kills people on the streets of our major cities, when we say nothing, when oligarchs seize the media and control our production and consumption, we all face a moral choice. But fortunately, even ‘nobody’ can be much stronger than you think,” said David Bronstein in his Oscar speech.
Earlier, ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Documentary.
Talankin worked as a videographer at a school in the city of Karabash. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he began filming everything that happened at the educational institution — assemblies, meetings, ceremonial evenings, and lessons that the Ministry of Education required to be recorded. In 2024, Talankin left Russia, taking the footage with him.
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