(L-R) Director David Borenstein introduces co-director Pavel “Pasha” Talankin to the audience via video call at the Egyptian Theater in Park City for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” (Photo by Breanna Downs for Sundance Film Festival)
By Jordan Crucchiola
In a year where so many filmmakers are showcasing calls for action at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, the World Cinema Documentary Competition premiere of Mr. Nobody Against Putin serves as a reminder that democracy can die in daylight just as easily as it can in darkness, but that regular citizens can still rise up in the face of declining hope.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin first came to be when director David Borenstein received a message from Russian citizen Pavel “Pasha” Talankin. He lived in an industrial town at the base of the Ural mountains, and at the time in 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was still in its early days. Talankin worked as a videographer and student life organizer at the same high school he had attended, and as the war raged on and President Vladimir Putin’s propaganda efforts ramped up to quell public dissatisfaction with the conflict, Talankin started using his job of filming constantly around school to document the militarization and indoctrination protocols mandated in schools across the entire country.
In a pre-recorded video address, Talankin thanks the screening’s audience and tells them, “I don’t know if you are going to love this film or not, but I hope you will see more love in it than war.” Talankin was not able to travel to the U.S. for the January 25 premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, UT for the documentary he co-directed. “I hope you also find it important, important for our time and for the future. I want to say thanks to the rest of the team for your hard work and professionalism, and for your faith in this project and your love for this world. Huge thanks to the organizers of this event for their work as well. You preserve a place where culture and thought continues to live on. Thanks to you, voices from countries all over the world are being heard. Now, I can only hope that [the] main themes of this film, propaganda and war, become irrelevant as soon as possible.”
From early on in the filmmaking process, Borenstein and his producers started consulting with the BBC to learn proper security protocols for this sensitive investigation. But as the situation became more dangerous for Talankin — who kept a pro-peace flag on the wall of his office at work — the film team started working on a plan to get him out of Russia and seek asylum in a European country. Talankin successfully escaped, but until there is a wholesale regime change, he can never go back to his mother or friends in his hometown that he loves so much.
After returning to the stage for a post-show Q&A, Borenstein explains to the audience how the process of making Mr. Nobody Against Putin was forced to change as Russia started locking down any dissent against the war. “During that time, Russia was really in flux,” says Borenstein. “So when we first started, they had not passed the traitor law that basically would give Pasha life in prison for even making this film. They didn’t have a foreign agent law that would make it illegal for him to work with us. This was a time when people were still protesting on the street against the war, not knowing that there would be any consequences for it. And then, as we see in the film, as things start to get more and more intense, we started to realize we can’t make this film without Pasha leaving.”
As the situation got more risky, Borenstein worried that making the documentary would put Talankin in too much danger, but the filmmaker says it was always “[Talankin’s] fire that kept this going” even when Borenstein felt compelled to call it off. “This went from being something that was quite possible and I was relaxed about doing in Russia, to something that would completely end [Talankin’s] life,” says Borenstein. “So, at every stage we had to really think about what we were doing, and there were points actually where I was trying to stop him. He is so relentless and he is so committed to telling the truth, and he was so offended by the complicity of everyone around him that it was Pasha who kept saying, ‘We have to do it.’ And if I wasn’t going to be able to stop him, then I might as well do it with him and try to make sure it’s as safe as possible.” Together with his producer Helle Faber and co-producer Radovan Síbrt, who are both in attendance for the Q&A, Borenstein was able to get Talankin to safety.
For all his work on Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Talankin was made co-director of the film and is being paid retroactively for his efforts. As Borenstein puts it, “There is a production budget for this film, and he did the entire production.” And even though he couldn’t legally travel to Park City for this event, Borenstein calls Talankin from the stage and puts his phone on speaker up against a mic. Through a translator, Talankin says he was in tears seeing everyone in the theater, telling the crowd, “One thing that unites all of us who are here right now is love.” He then shares a message he got from a teacher at the school after they had learned that he’d made the documentary. It read, “Pasha, you are such an asshole.”
But Talankin had another message that he wanted to share. As word has started to travel around Karabash, his home, about Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Talankin has heard from people who believe in what he’s doing and share his hope for a better future in Russia. One of those messages says, “Even while being in Russia, we believe in peace and love, and we definitely believe that the war is going to end and the morning is going to start, and this morning is going to help us feel and be happy.”
