When the filmmakers behind “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” took the stage at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, they didn’t shy away from the parallels they see between their Russia-set documentary and the current political environment of the United States.
“‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country,” writer and co-director David Borenstein said upon taking the stage. “What we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities. When we don’t say anything when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it.”
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar on Sunday, taking a category that many had predicted would go to “The Perfect Neighbor.” Borenstein directed the film alongside Pavel Talankin, the subject of the film.
Borenstein’s speech drew unsubtle parallels between the story they captured in Russia and recent actions in the United States. In particular, Borenstein referenced the actions of ICE in cities like Minneapolis and concerns over Paramount’s potential ownership of both CBS and CNN under David Ellison following a potential Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
“We all face a moral choice,” Borenstein said. “But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.” You can watch the full speech below.
Borenstein then threw to his co-director Talankin, his film’s main character and titular “nobody.” “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” follows Talankin, a Russian schoolteacher who documents his school’s transformation into a war recruitment center during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Talankin too used his Oscars speech to make a direct plea to the audience — one on behalf of Ukraine and beyond.
“For four years, we’d look at the sky for shooting stars to make a very important wish,” Talankin said, translated to English from Russian. “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.”
Borenstein later expanded on his comments backstage in the Oscars’ press room, mentioning Donald Trump by name as he talked about the situation he sees evolving in the United States.
“One interesting thing about working with a team of Russians throughout this process has been my desire, as an American, to constantly compare the situation in America to Russia,” he said. “But a lot of my Russian colleagues and friends always said, ‘No, it’s not the same situation. It’s actually happening quicker in America than it’s been happening in Russia. Trump was moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years.’ So that’s kind of all I have to say to that.”
