Russian small town teacher Pavel Talankin turns the militarization of his school into a riveting documentary against state propaganda
Teachers play a pivotal role when winning wars, announces Vladimir Putin in a TV state broadcast: “Commanders don’t win wars, teachers win wars.” The Russian president’s words are a brutal testimony of the central theme of Pavel Talankin’s and David Borenstein’s courageous documentary: the militarization of Russian schools. Combining observation and personal reflexion, their film chronicles at close range the state enforced transformation of a public school in the Ural Mountains into a militaristic propaganda mill. While Borenstein assembled and streamlined the material, major credit must go to Pavel “Pasha” Talankin. The young teacher started on his own filming the cooption of his school in 2022.
As the school’s assigned event coordinator and videographer he had unique access and also extensive archive material at hands. Ironically, Talankin was even tasked to film some ideologic lessons and militaristic displays to prove the school complied with the changed curriculum. Around the same time he started to document his concerns about what was going on in a video diary. His handheld camera takes the audience right in the middle of events in his remote home Karabash. Among travel bloggers the mining town gained some notoriety as the most toxic town on earth. But among dilapidated Soviet structures, copper plants and cancer rates resides a tightly knit community.
Talankin’s darkly humorous presentation of this grim place is strangely affecting. He strives to create moments of joy for his students and to teach them independent-mindedness. He loves this ugly town, his job and his country. As he puts it: “Loving you country means saying: We have a problem.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought this problems into the classrooms. Soon the students had to recite patriotic poems and wave Russian flags while their teachers had to follow a new syllabus. It paints Ukraine as an evil aggressor and warns them of enemy infiltration. TV clips and YouTube videos illustrate the country’s nationalist agitation.
Instead of ball games the kids train to throw hand granaries and have marching practice between classes. Talankin proves a sharp observer and captures some remarkable shots. Close-ups of primary school kids with assault rifles show the perversion of the militaristic pedagogy. The slightly shaky images are in turn touchingly intimate and unnervingly direct. As more young men get drafted, his anti-war stance makes his colleagues increasingly uneasy. It would have been easy to paint him as cool rebel. Instead, his unpretentious empathy, his slightly awkward nerdiness and honest concern make him always approachable. As he decides to publish his material, it is clear he’ll have to leave Russia.
His defiant chronicle is more than a rare objective perspective from the other side of Russia’s invasion. It’s an essential account about the machinations of state propaganda. It is both personal and universal as meditation on the responsibility of one person within a community and a political system. Commanders don’t win wars. Teachers win wars. With his camera and ethical conviction, Pavel Talankin has given a remarkable example of that.
- OT: Mr. Nobody Against Putin
- Director: Pavel Talankin & David Borenstein
- Screenplay: Pavel Talankin & David Borenstein
- Year: 2025
- Distribution | Production © Made in Copehnhagen, Pink Productions
