“I Filmed It, and I Posted It. Now, Watch”: David Borenstein on His Sundance-Debuting Mr. Nobody Against Putin

David Borenstein’s Sundance-premiering Mr. Nobody Against Putin stars Pavel “Pasha” Talankin (also credited as co-director), an “unlikely hero” in an even more unlikely collaboration. A jokey primary school teacher in his Ural Mountains hometown of Karabash (which has the dubious distinction of being one of the most polluted cities on the planet), Pasha spends many days mentoring the kids who use the thirty-something’s open door office as a hangout/safe haven. That is, when he’s not documenting their young lives as the school’s videographer. Which is why things get rather complicated for this pro-democracy, but non-activist, educator. For once Putin decides to launch his “special military operation” life is turned upside down in this toxic mining town a world away, over a thousand miles from cosmopolitan Moscow — especially when a new “patriotic education” is mandated, swapping out the usual subjects for revisionist history, the singing of the State Anthem of the Russian Federation, and marching drills. All of which must be filmed by the school’s videographer, of course, as both proof of adherence and ammunition in the Kremlin’s propaganda war. Which is how Pasha found himself with a trove of truly remarkable footage, equal parts absurd and terrifying. And then he made the momentous decision to keep covertly shooting while smuggling it all out to an expat American filmmaker he just happened to get connected with online (after he’d pitched a Russian reality tv show seeking accounts of how the war had impacted everyday citizens) — a filmmaker who, in turn, shaped the story while gaining even more insight into his accidental protagonist through an exhausting, two years-plus of chatting over encrypted phone calls. Indeed, as Pasha succinctly puts it in his co-director’s statement, “Everyone was exhausted, but the orders kept coming: film it, post it. ‘Film it and post it.’ Well, I filmed it, and I posted it. Now, watch.” Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning, Copenhagen-based journalist and filmmaker (2016’s Dream Empire, last year’s Can’t Feel Nothing) a few weeks prior to the doc’s January 25th Sundance debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.