Russia declares protagonist of Oscar-winning documentary a ‘foreign agent’ 

Russia has declared the teacher and main protagonist of the Oscar-winning documentary “Mr Nobody Against Putin” a foreign agent.

Pavel Talankin, who won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards earlier this month with US director David Borenstein, spent two years documenting pro-war propaganda at a school in the Chelyabinsk region in west-central Russia while working as the school’s videographer.

Talankin fled Russia in 2024, smuggling out the footage for use 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.

Since Russia launched its full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian authorities have sought to totally suppress opposition to the war while aiming to rally support for the war among Russian citizens.

Talankin’s name appeared in a statement on the justice ministry’s list of foreign agents on Friday.

Without naming the film, it said 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 war in Ukraine.

People listed as foreign agents are subject to onerous bureaucratic requirements and income restrictions in Russia.

They are also obliged to place the foreign agent label on social media posts and on anything else they publish.

The documentary by Talankin and Borenstein uses two years of footage that Talankin recorded at ‌a school where he was employed to show how students were exposed to pro-war messaging.

In his acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony on March 15, 2026, Talankin said, “For four years, we look at the sky for shooting stars to make a very important wish, but there are countries where instead of shooting stars, they have shooting bombs and shooting drones”.

“In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now”, he said.

The documentary has been controversial even among Russians who oppose Putin and the war, with some criticising Talankin for filming colleagues and children without their consent for ⁠his clandestine project.

Talankin has defended the film as a record for posterity, showing how “an entire generation became angry and aggressive”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said after the Oscars that he had not seen the film and therefore could not comment on it.