Pavel "Pasha" Talankin is an event coordinator and cameraman in an elementary school in Karabash, a city in Goreshist Russia where the average lifespan is 38 years due to a copper smelting plant. But dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin thinks even this lifespan is too much, and thus decides to shorten it by declaring a war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and sending Russians to die there. The school is ordered by the government to introduce a new "patriotic curriculum" and trick kids into supporting war. Pavel receives an offer from abroad to film these events in school and incorporate them into a documentary, and he accepts since the government orders that such lectures should be filmed. Pavel also talks to Masha, a girl whose brother was drafted and died in Ukraine. After he filmed enough, a disgusted Pavel secretly smuggles the footage and flees to safety in another country.
Documentary "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" is a modern retelling of Lot fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah, from a place ruined by malice and wickedness which was so normalized that people themselves didn't even know how decadent they have become. This symbolism is inadvertent, but still appears gradually and naturally from the horrid events the cameraman Pavel Talankin is recording for history to remember, as a warning for future generations how to avoid making their society fall into the abyss that sunk his country, contaminated by the worst mass murderer of the 21st century Europe from the title. What Talankin is able to record in his town during the Russo-Ukrainian War is simply astonishing. At times the events seem to mirror those of "Jojo Rabbit", showing Goreshist propaganda indoctrinating Russian children and the senseless militarization of schools, presenting this as an idealized utopia; at other times, it reminds of a scene from "Simpsons" episode "A Star is Burns", where principal Skinner is under threat to be burned at the stake by the mob for claiming that the Earth reolves around the Sun—one simply wonders how such primitivism, atavism and counterfeiting of reality is still possible in modern civilization.
It is a real struggle to stomach some of the disgusting situations shown here. For instance, after Putin's totalitarian dictatorship ordered that a new "patriotic curriculum" is to be held in the elementary school, a teacher is seen reading from paper in the classroom: "State policy in Ukraine is decided by radicals, nationalists and neo-Nazis. Everything that unites us is under attack." Why is a teacher teaching war to children aged 12? Why is the photo of the head of state in every classroom? The next teacher, a certain Abdulmanov, goes even further, exaggerating off-script, claiming that in France people have to pay 150€ to fill their tank with petrol and that they will soon have to ride on horses, adding angrily at the end: "As I said, we could destroy Ukraine in a couple of days." TV anchors speak even more extremist statements: "We shouldn't kill them out of hate. We must kill them out of love, love for our children." At a school event, prizes are announced: "The second place for grenade throwing, age category 15-16, goes to..."; whereas even Wagner paramilitary soldiers are seen holding a lecture in the classroom, giving a small landmine to some girls sitting there to pass it forward to others. Later, some kids are given unloaded rifles and encouraged to practice shooting. A shocking, concise and sharp chronicle of madness and moral downfall of a society, this movie gives the documentary genre a reason to exist. And a message that no matter what problems you have, at least you are lucky that you were not born in Goreshist Russia.
Grade:+++
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