Russian authorities ban broadcast of documentary Mr. Nobody against Putin

A Russian court on Thursday banned the documentary from being broadcast on three streaming platforms Mr. Nobody vs. Putinrecently awarded an Oscar and which denounces the recruitment of students in the Russian school system. In the Chelyabinsk region, at the foot of the Urals, where this documentary was filmed, judge Ksenia Boukharinova granted the prosecutor’s request for a ban on broadcasting the film on three video hosting services, including VK-video, widely used in Russia, several Russian media reported. Prosecutor Evgueni Toumchine demanded that this measure be taken because he believed that the director had filmed children without the consent of their parents, reported the local media It’s my City.

The judge, according to the independent media SotaVision, also considered that the documentary included “signs of propaganda conveying a negative attitude towards the government” and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an audio recording of his judgment broadcast by SotaVision.

The judge also noted that the director was showing himself in front of a blue-white-blue flag, which has become a symbol of Russian opponents of the large-scale offensive against Ukraine but which is also used by the Russian Freedom Legion organization, classified as terrorist by the Russian authorities.

A director in exile

Pavel Talankin, educational facilitator and videographer in a school in the small town of Karabakh in the Urals, officially filmed the increasingly thorough recruitment of students, desired by the Russian authorities following the offensive launched in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Opposed to this war, he fled Russia in the summer of 2024, with the hard drives containing these videos. The images are the basis of the 90-minute film, co-directed by Pavel Talankin and American director David Borenstein, which received the award for best documentary at the Oscars in mid-March.

On March 18, a Russian human rights committee had already accused the documentary of using images of minors without the consent of their parents. Questioned by the media about this documentary, the Kremlin kicked the question several times. The film did not appear in the table summarizing the Oscars published by the Russian state press agency Ria Novosti.