Oscars 2026: David Borenstein And Pavel Talankin's Mr. Nobody Against Putin Wins Best Documentary Feature

Mr. Nobody Against Putin won the Oscar for Documentary Feature Film on Sunday night. The film chronicles Russian teacher Pavel Talankin's secret footage exposing Kremlin propaganda. Director David Borenstein and the film’s protagonist and co-director Talankin's speeches were one of the major highlights of the 98th Academy Awards.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin Oscar speech

Borenstein, the Copenhagen-based American director, in his acceptance speech, said, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage, it’s 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. We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a ‘nobody’ is more powerful than you think,” he added.

Backstage, while speaking about one of the most dangerous moments in the filmmaking process, Talankin said, “The most dangerous moment…in the process of making the film was that when I left and tried to cross the border of Russia and leave with all of the hard drives and materials.”

“Russia is the government where, when you leave, they can search all of your belongings. They can look to everything I had, all of your correspondence, everything.”

“In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” Talankin said in Russian from the stage through a translator.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin triumphed at the Oscars by beating up other nominees, The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, Cutting Through Rocks and The Perfect Neighbor.