Within the wave of documentaries in regards to the Ukraine Struggle which have come out over the previous two years, there hasn’t been one which’s supplied what Daniel Borenstein’s “Mr. No person In opposition to Putin” does — and definitely not with such wit, verve, and perception: The view inside Russia.
Borenstein is the credited director, however the footage itself was largely shot by Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a man with an impish grin and a freethinking sensibility who labored as a videographer and occasions coordinator at Karabash Main College #1. Karabash is a small city of 10,000 within the Ural Mountains, which exterior guests have tried to color because the “most polluted city on the earth” because of its copper smelting plant that one observer says has resulted within the city’s inhabitants having a mean life expectancy of 38. “It’s not so unhealthy,” Pasha says in his voiceover proper after that. And as a lot of the movie that follows is about illuminating the darkish flip Russia has taken for the reason that Ukraine Struggle — particularly by way of indoctrinating its kids — it’s additionally slyly a message to the West: Russians don’t all suppose alike, they usually don’t all dwell in grinding, depressing situations.
Since Talankin shot nearly the entire footage in his position as the varsity’s videographer himself, he’s credited as DP (and as co-director) of “Mr. No person In opposition to Putin.” And although he’s aiming for the sort of nuance that the West doesn’t sometimes see in depictions of Russia, he’s clear-eyed in regards to the all-out descent into totalitarianism the nation has skilled since these harrowing days of February 2022, when Vladimir Putin started his “particular navy operation” in opposition to Ukraine.
Not too a few years faraway from the varsity himself, Pasha has the sort of the reference to the scholars there indicative of somebody who was a scholar there himself. We see him filming poetry readings and making an attempt to shoot a music video with the older college students (the varsity seems to be usually a Ok-12). After which all of the sudden, in February 2022, they’re requested “from above” to begin staging patriotic shows and the singing of anthems in regards to the Motherland. It’s about each indoctrinating the scholars, and ensuring that the varsity employees are keen to indoctrinate the scholars when ordered in order that the federal government is aware of the grownup inhabitants is falling in line (which precedence is extra essential is unclear, although we all know even within the U.S., as seen within the documentary “The Librarians,” that bad-faith political actors consider indoctrinating kids will assist obtain future objectives). Pasha then has to add all of the patriotic movies to a mysterious authorities web site.
From that time on, every schoolday begins with a “presentation of the colours” ceremony that requires youngsters to do a military-style march. “Are we fully fucked up?” Pasha asks his supervisor when the order comes down to begin doing this. “Fuck! It hurts!” All of the sudden, class lectures are all about the necessity to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. Assault rifle demonstrations are held. And youthful college students are inspired to affix a brand new “patriotic” group that has its roots within the Soviet Pioneers (however that almost all U.S. viewers watching this will be predisposed to consider as akin to the Hitler Youth).
The best way that Pasha reveals us this stuff being added to the curriculum, it’s clear it wasn’t all the time like this. Russians have a higher variety of thought in terms of Putin and the Ukraine Struggle than is often acknowledged within the West. And this explicit slide into totalitarianism is a slightly latest improvement (which provides one hope that it could possibly be reversed). Presumably, Putin felt that ramping up the propaganda efforts for the Ukraine Struggle, a struggle during which Russians would possibly really feel they’re combating in opposition to their brothers and sisters, required higher effort than something tried for Russia’s involvement within the wars in Syria and Chechnya.
There are undoubtedly some true believers right here. One instructor, Mr. Abdulmanov, wins an award as a result of he’s turned his historical past class right into a veritable each day propaganda lecture. When requested, he consists of Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s NKVD head, and a infamous assassin and sexual predator (a number of kids’s skulls had been discovered on his property, amongst these of others), as one in every of his private heroes. Even Pasha’s mom, a librarian who he clearly loves (although he says he’s by no means informed her), helps the struggle — even when her justification is that “our folks have all the time been concerned in all of the battles” and that “folks love capturing one another.”
Over time, Pasha makes contact on Instagram with a producer within the West who’s concerned about footage being taken about how the struggle’s being communicated inside Russia. Presumably, that’s how this ensuing movie got here to be. However Pasha additionally will get it in his head to begin subverting the day-to-day propaganda on the faculty, which may make him a goal even earlier than delivering the footage he’s taken to the producer.
Sooner or later, Pasha even subverts the each day “procession of the colours” ceremony by swapping out the Russian nationwide anthem for Woman Gaga’s rendition of the “The Star Spangled Banner,” and in his voiceover notes that nothing could possibly be extra threatening to the regime than the very fact it was Gaga’s model. The Western view is likely to be that Pasha can be spirited away to a gulag as quickly as he did that, however nothing occurs straight away. There’s a police automotive all of the sudden parked in entrance of his condominium block, nevertheless. And he is aware of that he’ll have to depart the nation if he’s ever to share all of the video footage he’s taken. There are moments when Pasha laments what’s occurred right here, even when he instantly qualifies it by saying “after all, it’s nothing like what’s occurring in Ukraine.” However even nonetheless, he grieves over former college students he knew who’ve been drafted and despatched to Ukraine and by no means returned.
When the varsity’s commencement ceremony lastly arrives, Pasha makes use of the event to ship a speech that’s each about honoring the grads and an announcement about how a lot he himself has discovered right here — with hindsight everybody would have acknowledged it as a farewell speech. And certainly, he fled the following day.
Borenstein assembled all of this into a movie that’s not solely a revealing little bit of journalism on Talankin’s half however a satisfying character research about an impartial thinker all of the sudden confronted with totalitarianism. You’re rooting for Pasha so onerous in all of this, even when, primarily based on the existence of this movie and his retroactive voiceover, you understand from the very starting he should be okay. “Mr. No person In opposition to Putin” is exclusive in coping with critical points about struggle and dehumanization with a lightweight, even humorous, and definitely personality-filled, contact — within the serious-as-a-heart-attack struggle documentary panorama, it’s a unicorn. The truth that it results in extra empathy and understanding, and a capability for seeing atypical Russians in a extra human gentle, makes it profound movie in addition to an enticing one.
Grade: A-
“Mr. No person In opposition to Putin” world premiered within the World Cinema Documentary Competitors on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. It’s presently in search of U.S. distribution.
Wish to keep updated on IndieWire’s movie evaluations and important ideas? Subscribe right here to our newly launched e-newsletter, In Evaluate by David Ehrlich, during which our Chief Movie Critic and Head Evaluations Editor rounds up one of the best new evaluations and streaming picks together with some unique musings — all solely out there to subscribers.