Mr. Nobody Against Putin — Screening & Conversation with Pavel Talankin

We invite you to a special screening of the Academy Award–winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, followed by a conversation with Pavel Talankin, the Russian teacher, filmmaker, and eyewitness whose extraordinary footage exposed how Putin’s war machine reached into the classroom.

Winner of the 2026 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Mr. Nobody Against Putin is one of the most urgent and consequential films about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—not from the battlefield, but from inside a Russian school. Talankin, then working in the education system in Karabash, secretly documented the transformation of ordinary school life into a machinery of propaganda, militarized “patriotic education,” and political obedience.

What makes the film so powerful is its intimacy. It does not show dictatorship as an abstraction. It shows how authoritarianism enters a morning assembly, a classroom assignment, a teacher’s meeting, a child’s vocabulary. It captures the quiet moral pressure placed on educators, parents, and students as the state demands participation in war—not only from soldiers, but from society itself.

Talankin’s act of documentation came at enormous personal risk. Now living outside Russia and designated by the Russian state as a “foreign agent,” he brings to Washington a rare firsthand account of how propaganda is built, how fear spreads, and how resistance can begin with a camera, a conscience, and the refusal to look away.

Following the screening, Talankin will discuss the making of the film, the risks of filming under Putin’s regime, the weaponization of schools in wartime Russia, and what his experience reveals about the future of Russian society, accountability, and resistance.

At each of our events you can expect a warm atmosphere, an ability to network as well as complimentary refreshments.
RSVP is required for this event.

Pavel “Pasha” Talankin is a Russian educator, filmmaker, and former teacher-organizer from Karabash, an industrial town in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. At Karabash Primary School No. 1, he worked with students, organized extracurricular activities, filmed school events, and taught children basic video production, including shooting and editing.

Known locally as a school mentor and videographer rather than a political activist, Talankin found himself in a unique position to observe how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed everyday life inside the education system. His role gave him access to assemblies, classroom rituals, official ceremonies, and the growing pressure placed on teachers and students to participate in state propaganda.

Talankin later left Russia and now lives in Europe. His work has brought international attention to the way authoritarian systems use schools, public institutions, and ordinary civic life to normalize obedience, militarism, and fear.