‘They’d break my knees’: teacher who exposed Russia’s school propaganda

Pavel Talankin, a teacher and co-director featured in the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, spent two-and-a-half years secretly filming a government-mandated patriotic education programme in a primary school. The Oscar-nominated film, which won the Bafta for best documentary after a Sundance prize that was also ignored by Russian state media, shows how the new curriculum is designed to mould children into supporters of Putin and the war in Ukraine.

Pupils who appear in the film have had to watch bootlegged copies privately on phones and laptops, and Talankin hopes the film’s inclusion at the Oscars will make more Russians aware of what is happening inside their schools. The footage documents classes uploaded to a government website as evidence that staff were meeting quotas, and Talankin secretly sent recordings out of the country to US director David Borenstein.

Russia

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