MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN - Ukrainian Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN looks at Russia’s war on Ukraine from inside a Russian school, where patriotism, fear and obedience are turned into daily routine. The film follows Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a teacher and school videographer in the industrial town of Karabash, as he quietly documents how the state’s war message enters classrooms, assemblies and children’s lives.

Talankin’s job is supposed to be simple: film school events, produce cheerful material, keep the official image intact. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that same camera becomes something else. He records patriotic lessons, military ceremonies, pressure on teachers and students, and the slow normalisation of a war many people are expected to support in public, whatever they may think in private.

Directed by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin, the film premiered at Sundance in 2025, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award. It has since become one of the most discussed documentaries about how authoritarian politics enters ordinary institutions, not through one dramatic speech, but through repetition, paperwork, ceremonies and silence.

Screening after A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY and SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN closes Friday’s Haunted Ukraine program by turning from Ukrainian memory and folklore toward the Russian state machinery still trying to control the present. It’s included here as a special context screening.