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'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' wins BAFTA award for best documentary

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'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' wins BAFTA award for best documentary
David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin pose with their award for Best Documentary for "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" during the 79th British Academy Film Awards, at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Center, London. (Photo by Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images)

"Mr. Nobody Against Putin" won for best documentary at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) on Feb. 22.

The documentary draws on footage filmed by Pavel Talankin, a videographer at a school in the industrial town of Karabash, to chronicle how Russia has transformed its schools into indoctrination and military recruitment centers since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine.

"When a treason law threatened (Talankin) with imprisonment, he kept filming. When a police car started monitoring him outside his house, he kept filming. And when he had to sacrifice his entire life in Russia to smuggle out this footage, he didn't hesitate," praised David Borenstein, the co-director of the documentary, while accepting the award.

"We always face a moral choice. No matter who we are, there is power in our actions."

The documentary has received wide acclaim for the fact that it shows how the war against Ukraine is not just "(Russian President Vladimir) Putin's war" but a war sustained by both a climate of fear and open support among the populace within Russia.

"Mr. Nobody Against Putin" has also been nominated for best documentary at the Academy Awards, scheduled to take place on March 16.

Also among the nominees for best documentary at the BAFTA Awards was Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov’s "2000 Meters to Andriivka," which depicts a battle from the 2023 counteroffensive partly using Ukrainian soldiers' helmet-camera footage.

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Kate Tsurkan

Culture Reporter

Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent and is partially supported by a generous grant from the Nadia Sophie Seiler Fund. Kate co-translated Oleh Sentsov’s “Diary of a Hunger Striker,” Myroslav Laiuk’s “Bakhmut,” Andriy Lyubka’s “War from the Rear,” and Khrystia Vengryniuk’s “Long Eyes,” among other books. Some of her previous writing and translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine and, in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, also knows French.

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