“Mr. Nobody” and his 7 memory discs

He looks like the American actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was a tough guy with intellectual glasses. The genius of the episode, gradually moved to the main roles. He didn’t live long. Already later it became known about all his addictions and phobias. But about the protagonist of the movie “Mg. Nobody against Putin” teacher Pavel Talankin nothing of the kind can not be said. No abysses are visible. No shocking cameo appearances. I read somewhere that Talankin is gay, and that doesn’t explain much. In my opinion, nothing at all.

In the movie, it’s just a cute guy in a pink sweater. Worked at the high school. Local chronicler with a video camera on his shoulder. Plus, he’s the organizer of the school’s holiday parties, lineups, recitals. Mom is right there at his side – working in the school library, re-gluing old, torn books. That is, Pasha’s whole life is a small town, a succession of gray paneled houses, a cozy “two-bedroom” and a copper metallurgical plant, which smokes and poisons the air with something intolerably harmful.

But they prefer to keep quiet about it here. What’s the point of talking if everything in this town depends on the combine. All of life, and these children and their parents… And they prefer not to talk about the war either. And if they do talk about it, it must be said without any enthusiasm. With anxiety and longing in their eyes. Another misfortune that has fallen on the heads of teachers and their students. But we have to bear it all, endure it all. We have to write a lot of manuals, conduct a dozen “lessons about the main things”, and report to our superiors on the work done.

Some will receive a diploma for this, and the most distinguished will be awarded a separate living space. And it’s all online. Pasha captures it all on camera. In one of his interviews, he confessed:

Pasha had seven disks in total. And he managed to get them all abroad. In the reviews of the film, there was only talk of militarization, the cult of war and other horrors. I guess you can watch it that way if you want. But for me, “Mr. Nobody” is a film about the universal habit of unhappiness, about submission to fate and misfortune, which is literally dissolved in the poisoned air of this small Ural town. Everyone is used to the fact that the combine poisons. They are used to the fact that the authorities can do anything to you, including sending you to certain death. But if you live in a town like Karabash, you have no choice. To be more precise, there is only one choice – either to go to war or to leave, only to be immediately labeled a traitor to your homeland.

The movie has heartbreaking footage of young boys getting their hair cut to zero. It starts as a funny game and ends in unexpected tears. Where and why are they being sent? They already know they may not come back. And they are, of course, scared.

Pasha Talankin, who has chosen to leave, is also scared. He stands in front of the shelves with his books, lovingly selected by the color of their covers. He doesn’t know which one to take with him.

I don’t want to retell here the story of how Pasha got in touch with documentary filmmaker David Borenstein, how they agreed to make the movie, how they divided their responsibilities: Pasha filmed, David built the drama and was responsible for the voice-over.

It is known that after the release of the movie and the Oscar nomination, law enforcers came to the school where Pasha worked. There was a serious showdown in the Ministry of Education of the Chelyabinsk region. Pasha’s mother was forced to resign from the school library and is now afraid that her house will be set on fire.

Pasha himself was already in the process of filming when his students began to avoid him. Their reactions to his departure and the news about the movie were very different.

But none of them have seen the movie yet. In fact, this is the eternal dilemma of documentary filmmakers of all times: is it possible to violate personal space without the hero’s permission? And here we have a school and small children… Another thing is that all the heroes of the movie knew that they were being filmed. There was no hidden camera at all. Everything as it should be for reporting, so he filmed! But the fact that this will be a documentary for the BBC, neither children nor adults, of course, did not know. We see the everyday life of one Russian school and one small provincial town in the Urals, whose life has not changed so much over the four years of the war.

And only once in this gray facelessness, in this everyday sameness of grief and joy, terrible screams burst in from somewhere from the very abyss, from the very Ural rift, from the very blackness of the frame. Pasha did not dare to shoot in the cemetery, or he was not allowed to. We see only one black square. And we hear the desperate, inhuman cry of the murdered man’s mother: “Let me see him. Why don’t you show me?” But it seems that everything was quickly shut down there: the farewell ceremony and the audio recording. Why disturb the living and the dead. The main thing is to be quiet.

Actually, the movie “Mr. Nobody” is about this stultifying, ringing silence, which cannot be filled, cannot be voiced neither by speeches from TV, nor by cheerful voices of school lines, nor by military marches on May 9, nor by lucid explanations of Wagner’s guest musicians, what to do if you encounter a bomb on the road. Especially since such encounters are becoming more and more likely every day. The cheerful bespectacled Pasha Talankin escaped from all this, taking with him seven disks on which were recorded school days and holidays.

After its premiere at Sundance 2025, Mr. Nobody vs. Putin has already screened at film festivals around the world – in the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as at DocsBarcelona. The film has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary category, and the award ceremony will take place on the night of March 15-16, 2026 in Los Angeles. There will be special screenings in February and March in various countries, and after the Oscars, the film will be released in theaters and streaming services for general audiences.