‘Many teachers don’t want to do this, but they’re trapped’: film shows extent of Putin indoctrination in Russian schools

Pavel Talankin in Mr Nobody Against Putin, the documentary he co-directed with David Borenstein. Photograph: Pavel Talankin/Courtesy of Sundance Institute

As Russian tanks advanced into Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin was waging a parallel battle on the home front – one fought not with weapons but with ideology, reaching deep into the nation’s classrooms.

In a high school in Karabash, a small industrial town in the Ural mountains, teacher Pavel Talankin knew he had to document it.