Mr Nobody Against Putin wins best documentary Oscar

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.

mr nobody, pavel talankin, david borenstein, oscar, documentary, indoctrination, russia, ukraine, academy, perfect neighbor