Russia bans Oscar-winning film Mr Nobody Against Putin
A court in Russia has banned the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin from being shown on three streaming platforms, claiming it promotes extremism and terrorism.
Source: BBC
Details: The ruling was issued by a court in Chelyabinsk, near Karabash, the town where Pavel Talankin, who shot the footage, used to work in a school. The film must be removed from three Russian online platforms – VK, Yandex and Motion Video.
According to Russian media outlets, prosecutors argued that the documentary expresses a "negative attitude towards Russia's policies and the current government". DW reported that Russia's Presidential Human Rights Council had complained about alleged infringements of minors' rights in the film and has written to the Oscars organising committee and UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany.
The film, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in early March, depicts the intensification of military propaganda in a Russian school following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The protagonist, Pavel Talankin from Karabash, works as a videographer at the school and films propaganda lessons. The footage is supposed to be submitted to the authorities as evidence that the lessons took place.
While filming the lessons, Talankin connected online with director and producer David Borenstein, who later compiled the material and secured funding for the film.
UP.Culture film critic Sonia Vseliubska commented: "The symbolism embedded in the film's title largely echoes the rhetoric of the Russian opposition – an abstract 'Mr Nobody', the protagonist, up against Putin as a singular evil that has distorted his beloved country.
Talankin himself, in an interview with a Russian opposition outlet, refers to himself as a patriot and says the film is about love – for his city and his homeland. For him, 'war is grief, war is death. And a bad peace is better than war. People here [in Europe] think the same, and I do not feel any inner dissonance.'"
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