“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” follows a small-town Russian school teacher who clandestinely records the rapid politicization of public education after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, documenting how nationalist wartime ideology has been inserted into everyday classroom lessons and rituals. The film’s strongest passages show, in unnervingly mundane detail, how students are taught to internalize a state-approved narrative built on distortion and outright lies about Ukraine, Europe, and the West. The implication is stark. An entire generation of Russian children is being raised on a carefully curated alternate reality, one that will make it extraordinarily difficult for Russia to reemerge as a normal, outward-looking country for decades to come. 

The documentary is less effective when it focuses on its teacher-protagonist, who ultimately fled to Copenhagen for fear of persecution by the Russian government. His extended attention to his own fears and emotional processing distracts from the film’s most important contribution, a clear-eyed account of how authoritarian systems reproduce themselves by shaping children early and systematically. In addition, the film arrives at an uneasy moment. As Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine enters its fifth year, asking viewers to stay trained on Russia—even critically—inevitably competes with the moral imperative to instead center Ukraine and Ukrainian artists and filmmakers living with the brutal consequences of Russia’s state-manufactured worldview. Even so, the film succeeds more than it stumbles. By exposing how disinformation is normalized in classrooms and absorbed as accepted truth, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” offers a sobering window into Russia’s future as well as its present.

– Judyth Twigg, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Political Science, College of Humanities and Sciences

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