‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ Director on Lifting the Lid on Kremlin Pro-War Propaganda in Sundance Documentary

variety.com:

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” which has its world premiere on Saturday in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival, delivers an insider’s view of the impact of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine on the lives of Russia’s children.

Variety spoke to the film’s director, David Borenstein, who worked alongside Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, the subject of the film and its co-director.

The trailer is shown below. The genesis for the project came when Pasha, a high-school teacher in a provincial town in Russia, responded to a request from a web content company for people to explain how the “special military operation” in Ukraine, as they call the invasion in Russia, had impacted their jobs. “Pasha responded to it with a passionate, political diatribe, talking about how his job had been turned upside down, how he’s been turned into a propagandist, and how his school, almost seemingly overnight, was turned into something that he didn’t recognize anymore,” Borenstein explains.

The web content company declined to pursue the matter but by a twist of fate Pasha’s response ended up in the hands of Borenstein, who is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but worked in China for many years.