‘Some parents said they would break my knees’: The teacher who exposed Putin’s propaganda in primary school | Oscars 2026

IIn order to watch the Oscar-nominated documentary in which many of them play starring roles, pupils at Karabash School No. 1 had to obtain smuggled copies, and watch the film in private, on their phones or laptops.

Russian state media snubbed the BAFTA award for best documentary last week for Mr. Nobody vs. Putin, and the award the film won at Sundance last year was met with silence. School staff and government officials in the Kremlin seem united in their desire to pretend they know nothing about the film.

But Pavel Talankin, the school teacher, co-director and star of the documentary, hopes the film’s inclusion in the Oscars later this month will make more Russians aware of its existence.

Footage taken by him shows his colleagues grappling with the launch of a new government-mandated national education program aimed at turning primary school pupils into Putin enthusiasts and supporters of the war against Ukraine. The documentary reveals the powerful propaganda mechanism used by Russia.

“I hope this helps these kids in the future understand that they were victims of all of this,” Talankin says. “This film is aimed primarily at Russians, showing them what is happening inside their schools now.”

Talankin, whose role at the school was to coordinate and photograph school events and extracurricular activities, spent two and a half years documenting the mass indoctrination campaign. Footage of classrooms had to be regularly uploaded to a government website as proof that staff were meeting the Ministry of Education’s quota required for national teaching.

He was also at great risk to himself, sending the footage out of the country to American director David Borenstein, who set to work editing it into a film.

The documentary shows obedient children who initially seem bored and disoriented by the classes, slowly absorbing the new material. Before the war against Ukraine began, they lined up to sing joyful choruses that said: “May there always be sunshine; May there always be sky.” A few months later, they raise their heads in disbelief as their teachers read government texts about the Russian military’s goals in Ukraine, stumbling over unfamiliar words like “denazification” and “demilitarization.”

Soon the school hallways echoed with the noise of children walking soberly through the building, their backs straight, arms swinging in unison. Representatives of the paramilitary organization Wagner visit them to teach them how to recognize and defeat mines that can explode under their feet. Grenade throwing competitions replace regular sports classes. Meanwhile, at home, children watch on television chat shows in which Russian soldiers discuss the war, uttering phrases such as: “We must not kill them.” [Ukrainians] Because of hatred, we must kill them because of our love for our children.

“Publicity is very effective,” says Talankin, 34, speaking in London two days after winning the Bafta. “The state is spending a lot of money on it, and they won’t care if it doesn’t work.”

The cumulative effect of introducing these classes into thousands of primary schools across Russia’s eleven time zones is very significant. “Putin’s government is doing everything it can to create a generation loyal to his policies,” he said. “The film not only highlights what is happening now, but also how when these children come out of education, in 10 or 15 years, a new generation of pro-Putin loyalists will be created.”

This indoctrination program has a negative impact on the normal education of children. An emergency staff meeting is held to discuss the cause of the sharp drop in grades at the school. Some teachers wonder if this is because too much time is spent on New Patriotic lessons. The school principal says wearily that she will be fired if she chooses to stop teaching the subject. “It’s impossible to get into Russian schools with a camera, so hearing her say that makes this the most important scene in the movie in my opinion,” he says.

Talankin was impressed that so many people in Karabash, a small industrial town in the Ural Mountains, were able to see the film. He says pirated copies were passed from person to person, such as samizdat volumes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s works banned in the Soviet Union. “Parents didn’t really know what was being taught in these classes. Some people wrote me expressing gratitude, others said we’ll break your knees next time we see you.”

When local officials learned that the film had been widely watched in the city, officers from the state intelligence agency of the Federal Security Service were sent to the school to talk to the teachers. “They gathered the school leadership and said: This person did not exist and does not exist, and you should not contact him. This film did not exist and does not exist, and you should not comment on it.”

It is important for Talankin to believe the film will eventually have an impact in Russia, because his participation in the documentary forced him to leave his family and flee the country where he had lived all his life to avoid arrest for dissent. Repressive anti-treason laws were introduced while he was filming, and if his project was exposed he risked life imprisonment.

The day after the 2024 school graduation ceremony, he told his mother (the school librarian) and his friends and classmates that he was going on vacation to Turkey for a week, packed a suitcase with copies of all his records, and left the country, hoping that his bags would not be searched.

He knows that he will not be able to return to his homeland, and he has been granted political asylum in Europe. He believes the personal sacrifice was worth it. “It is better to talk about problems than to remain silent about them.”

In his BAFTA acceptance speech, Bornstein highlighted the extreme courage shown by Talankin. “He’s not Mr. Nobody,” he told the audience. “He wanted to show how quickly totalitarianism can take over a school, a workplace, a government. And how our complicity becomes fuel in that fire.”

“When the treason law threatened him with prison, he kept filming. And when a police car started pulling up outside his house, he kept filming. And when he had to sacrifice his entire life in Russia to smuggle this footage, he didn’t hesitate. No matter who we are, there is always strength in our actions. Courage is found in unexpected places. We need more from Mr. Nobody.”