From grenade-throwing contests to marching drills, Pasha Talankin filmed how his school was being used as a military recruiting centre. Now the teacher turned film-maker is in hiding.
[…]
The teacher, Pasha Talankin, was talking to himself, facing his own crossroads, terrified of his own secret plan. Or, rather, talking to every one of us who wonder: what if an accident of history put me, little me, in a situation where I had a moral choice, where to do the right thing risked not just my comfort but my life?
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His documentary, Mr Nobody Against Putin, is a cross between School of Rock and Nineteen Eighty-Four, a surprisingly funny study of how authoritarian regimes break the spirit of all except the most unlikely and pig-headed. It’s at first about a place that couldn’t be further from our minds: a school community in Karabash, a place Russians regard as the back end of nowhere. Yet it’s also relevant to us all: when Mr Nobody Against Putin won the jury prize for international documentary at the Sundance Film Festival the audience gave a standing ovation, many talking of their own concerns of a future where they could be asked to say things they did not believe. Partly produced by a team from the BBC, the film gets its UK premiere at Sheffield DocFest today. I say to Talankin I hope he accepts my definition of him as heroic.
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[Edit typo.]
There’s a fun joke my dad used to tell me:
A Russian and an American are speaking, when the American says:
-America is a lot more free than Russia
The Russian replies:
-Why do you say so?
The American says:
-Right now, if I wanted, I could go down to Washington DC, enter the White House, go down to the Oval Office, and tell the president of the United States himself that I think he is an idiot, and I’d suffer no consequences
The Russian replies:
-Oh yeah? Right now I could go down to Moscow, go to the Red Square, enter the Kremlin, go in front of Putin, and tell him face to face that I think the President of the United States is an idiot
Sad part is that in reality you’d get arrested for tresspassing on suspicion of espionage if you tried either of these lol.