Pavel Talankin

teacher, documentary filmmaker, and cinematographer

Pavel Talankin (1991) is a Russian teacher, documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and co-director of the film Mr. Nobody Against Putin (2025). He was a teacher at a primary school in the town of Karabash, where, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he began secretly filming the transformation of everyday classroom instruction into an instrument of wartime propaganda. The documentary, which he created together with David Borenstein as a Danish-Czech co-production, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award. In 2026 the film also won a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary Film and an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. Talankin left Russia in 2024 and now lives in exile in Prague. In March 2026 Russian authorities designated him a “foreign agent”.