SUNDANCE 2025: Mr. Nobody Against Putin

With a new administration here in the America, we are witnessing our country transform before our eyes from one of equality and liberty for all to a land becoming more and more unrecognizable by the second. We are slowing transforming from  a nation of pride to a land harkening back to separatism inciting fear, exclusion and taking women back a hundred years backward.  What happens when the land you love shifts into darkness?  Does one become complicit or do you take a stand for what you believe is right not only for you, but for the country?

In his hometown in the Ural Mountains nestled within Russia, fun-loving Pavel “Pasha” Talakin works as a nonconformist teacher at the same primary school he attended as a child. However, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed everything. Suddenly the school and community he loved transformed from a place of education and self-expression to one of militarization and state ideology. Soon, his own students and their family members are recruited to fight, and Pasha must ask himself what one person can do.

Filmed secretly over two years, Mr. Nobody Against Putin is an unforgettable portrait of life in Russia today and the impossible choices citizens face when the country they love is in the hands of a ruler who demands it become something they cannot accept.

Watching children stripped of  innocence forced to speak on hybrid warfare, marching with flags, reciting war poems, being trained on assault rifles or the mandatory slightly skewed lessons about Russia, Ukraine, infrastructure and writing letters to soldiers knowing they are to be graded on their work will turn your stomach a million times over.  Using children as political pawns is about as low as you can get and inexcusable on a visceral level that is incomprehensible,  For all those reason and more is why Pasha knew it was time to leave a life, a Mom, students and friends behind to live the life he felt he deserved.

This doc will leave its audiences with a thumping heart anticipating the turn of events  as this is one time music does not heal what is ailing for many of a personal and political level. In addition, one is left wondering what will happen to these students when they don’t have someone like Pasha present to fight on their behalf.  One of the final images featuring an empty classroom the and his students once enjoyed laughter and each other’s company leaves the audience with all the answers it needs in this moment.

As Deepak Chopra once said, “All great change is preceeded by chaos.”  How many chaotic chapters in global history do human beings have to endure in order to not be treated political pawns – but as human beings deserving of  joy and the unbridled right to live how they choose, love who they choose and raise a family in any way they seem fit.  I guess only history will let us know…once again.