.
“This Russian web content company put out a call that said something along the lines of, how has your job changed because of the special military operation in Ukraine? And actually they were looking for positive stories.”
Talankin, Borenstein says, responded with a “ranty, emotional letter”.
“Basically saying, ‘you want to know how jobs have changed because of the war? Let me tell you how my job has changed. I’ve been turned into a propagandist, and I’m coming to work every day filled with guilt’.”
Through a “twist of fate”, Borenstein was sent that letter and the two started talking.
The resulting film Mr. Nobody Against Putin won an academy award for best documentary feature last month. A month earlier, it picked up a BAFTA for the same film.
Last month a court in Russia banned the documentary from three streaming platforms on the grounds that it “propagates extremism and terrorism”.
Initially, Borenstein was able to send a camera crew to Karabash before the Russian authorities clamped down, he says.
“There was a foreign agent law that made it illegal to work with foreigners.
“And then there was also a treason law that criminalised basically everything about working with me on this film. And so, under that context, the only person who could have filmed was Pasha.”
That Talankin was able to continue filming, was in part because he was undercover in a small town, Borenstein says.
“He went to school with the cops, he went to school with the people who were serving in the government. And I do think that they were perhaps not as tough on him as one might expect in a bigger city.”
As the war progresses, Talankin’s school is swiftly turned into a place of propaganda and deceit, he says, the propaganda largely met with cynicism.
“It doesn’t even seem that the propaganda is designed to make people believe in it. Rather, it’s designed to make people do absurd things again and again, pointlessly, until you just become very cynical, until you start to just completely lose hope.”
Lessons at Talankin’s school became increasingly militaristic, he says.
“There was this new patriotic military education that was basically all about militarising Russian society and turning schools into recruitment grounds, especially rural and small town schools, into recruitment grounds for providing soldiers to the war.”
Over the course of filming he saw, as the footage came in, how quickly this miltarised education became normalised.
“Wagner soldiers entering the school and teaching 12 and 13 year olds how to identify landmines in preparation for them one day becoming soldiers on a battlefield.”
The footage opened his eyes to the extent that Russian society is being militarised, he says.
“They’re just openly telling and teaching their kids, prepare for a new generation of warfare and empire.”
Meanwhile, Talankin kept filming, but his reputation starts to cost him, Borenstein says.
“Kids started feeling unsafe, hanging out with a teacher who had a reputation of being something of a liberal. And that community that Pasha built in the school was one of the things that got swept away in this kind of creeping authoritarianism that was taking over the school and Russian society at large.”
Talankin fled Russia when filming wrapped up, Borenstein says.
“He bought a seven-day return ticket. He pretended to go on a vacation to Istanbul where Russians can go visa-free.
“He left his house exactly as it was. He didn’t want to let anyone see around him that he was leaving. But he went on that flight and he stayed in Istanbul.”
Now somewhere in Europe, Talankin will always be looking over his shoulder, he says.
“We are surprised at the feathers that this film has seemed to ruffle in Russia. The film was banned a few days ago and he was added to a list of foreign agents within Russia.
“So, for sure, Pasha needs to be very concerned about his security.”
The film, he hopes, will serve as a warning.
“What I see in this film is the story of a person who is seeing everything that they love and believed in torn down by a government that they cannot accept.
“And then what’s the next question? It’s what do you do about it? Are you complicit or do you find a way to resist? And so for me, I just hope that this film stands up as a story of resistance and a rejection of complicity.”
