MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, life has changed in Russia - everything from what Russians can say to what they can buy. Perhaps most of all, it's changed what they can learn, as revealed by an undercover documentary, "Mr. Nobody Against Putin." The film was recently shortlisted for the Academy Awards. From Moscow, NPR's Charles Maynes has the story.
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PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: After President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine, it didn't take long for the war to be felt across the Russian heartland in communities and the classroom, says Pavel Talankin.
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PAVEL TALANKIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: A teacher in a small-town school in Russia's Ural Mountains, Talankin watched as directives came in from Moscow demanding the war be placed at the center of academic life.
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MAYNES: The state campaign, it wasn't even subtle, adds Talankin.
TALANKIN: (Through interpreter) In my opinion, it was all done so that we could create the illusion that the people were with the army. But it wasn't like that. They made us do this.
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MAYNES: Talankin's story lies at the center of a new documentary, "Mr. Nobody Against Putin." The film shows firsthand the war's impact on Talankin's school in Karabash, a small copper-mining town where life often seems as bleak as the landscape. But not to Talankin, the Mr. Nobody of the title. Known to everyone, including his students, affectionately as Pasha, he has a lot to say about a war he doesn't support and what it's doing to the town and school he so clearly loves.
TALANKIN: (Through interpreter) You see how the future can change in a minute, because what we should be saying is that war is bad and peace is good. We should be saying that it's better to talk than to fight.
MAYNES: As the school's resident videographer, Talankin is given the assignment to filming the school's compliance with state propaganda directives.
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TALANKIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: It's a job he takes on reluctantly till he realizes it's also the perfect cover to shoot a documentary. Enter David Borenstein.
DAVID BORENSTEIN: The story of the making of the film was the most interesting story to tell because it's something of a miracle that the film exists in the first place.
MAYNES: As we soon learn, Talankin reached out to Borenstein, an American filmmaker based in Copenhagen, more or less on a whim, setting off a remarkable long-distance collaboration between strangers, with Talankin surreptitiously uploading his footage at enormous personal risk. Again, Borenstein.
BORENSTEIN: He was so committed to showing what was happening in his school, and he was willing to do anything to make it happen. I thought that what he wanted to show in his school was so important for the world to see.
MAYNES: And through Talankin's lens, what you see is this - both the tragedy and absurdity of a community navigating the required patriotism of wartime Russia.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: One of the school's teachers, a member of Putin's ruling United Russia party, easily embraces the new dogma, telling students, for example, that economic sanctions only hurt the West. Others just go with the flow, even as they struggle to grasp, much less pronounce, new Kremlin buzzwords like the demand for Ukraine's demilitarizatsiya - demilitarization.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Russian).
TALANKIN: (Speaking Russian).
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UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: As for the students, they seem both bewildered and amused by demands to perform patriotic songs and marches, even attend graphic lectures by war mercenaries. Talankin is clearly heartbroken by all of this, just as he's saddened by how his students' lives and futures are being warped by events they have little control over.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Take this moment when Talankin documents the funeral of his student's brother, killed fighting in Ukraine, some 1,500 miles away.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: It's the one moment he turns off his camera, sound alone telling you everything you need to know.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Crying, speaking Russian).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Russian).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Crying, speaking Russian).
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UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing in non-English language).
MAYNES: It's intimate scenes like this, rarely witnessed by Western reporters, that earned the documentary honors at this year's Sundance Film Festival. And yet, since the film's release, the state's intrusion into educational life has only deepened.
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PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: The government has expanded a program of compulsory lessons, so-called conversations about important things, in which leading political figures, including President Putin - heard here - introduce students to a Kremlin world view.
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PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: And as of this school year, lectures start with children as young as 5. Meanwhile, textbooks and curricula have been revised to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing in Russian).
MAYNES: And online, propaganda videos routinely show children promoting the war effort and their president. Kremlin supporters say these and other measures, such as the return of nationalist Soviet-style youth movements, are a welcome antidote to what they argue were years of Western-influenced education policies that fostered a sense of shame about Russia and its past. Yet, in all of it, Talankin sees Putin preparing a new generation for a fight far beyond Ukraine.
TALANKIN: (Through interpreter) He's building the foundation of the future of his regime.
MAYNES: For all its insight, "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" is a movie most Russians won't see - certainly not these days, when criticism of the war is criminalized. And Talankin is no longer in his beloved Karabash, for obvious reasons, says the director, Borenstein. The risk became too great.
BORENSTEIN: We thought maybe that in the beginning this would be, like, a quick thing. And then, about three or four or five months into it, we realized Pasha cannot do this without leaving Russia.
TALANKIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Talankin, now living abroad in exile, says with the documentary out and playing at international film festivals, he still gets threats from Russia to never show his face in Karabash again. But some locals have reached out in support, and Talankin hopes Russians will find a way to see his documentary, to better understand how a school, a town and, yes, a country lost its way.
TALANKIN: (Through interpreter) How many questions are we going to ask ourselves later? And what answers will we find to understand how this happened, why silence became the norm?
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MAYNES: Because Talankin may be the unlikely hero many in the West will cheer for, but this Mr. Nobody has no illusions over who has the larger megaphone.
TALANKIN: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Because propaganda works, he tells me. It's why they do it. Charles Maynes, NPR News, Moscow.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing in non-English language). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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