Russian teacher Pavel Talankin holds up his Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film for 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin' at the 98th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on March 15, 2026. ANGELA WEISS / AFP
Russia declared the teacher and central protagonist of the Oscar-winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin a foreign agent on Friday, March 27, a label akin to being an enemy of the state.
Pavel Talankin, who won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards earlier this month together with US director David Borenstein, spent two years documenting pro-war propaganda at a school in Russia's Chelyabinsk region while working as the school's videographer. Talankin fled Russia in 2024, smuggling out the footage to be used in the film.
A Russian court banned the documentary from several streaming platforms on Thursday, saying it promoted "negative attitudes" about the Russian government and the war in Ukraine. The justice ministry added Talankin to its "register of foreign agents," updated on Friday.
Without naming the film, it said in a statement that Talankin had "disseminated inaccurate information" about Russia's leadership and "spoken out against the special military operation in Ukraine," Moscow's official term for the offensive against its neighbor.
