Pavel “Pasha” Talankin may seem like just another primary school events coordinator, but when he is forced by Vladimir Putin’s new dictates to not only implement a pro-war curriculum but to record teachers delivering its absurd, self-contradictory nonsense, he decides to use his camera to document the effects of the war in Ukraine and the propaganda war at home on his community, and especially his students. 

David Borenstein (“Dream Empire”, “Can’t Feel Nothing”), who along with Pasha co-directed the Oscar-shorlisted “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”, joins Mike to talk about how he came to work with Pasha through a casting call as well as the importance of tone in a movie filled both with humor as well as off-screen carnage.  And they speak too of one of the best villains in documentary film:  Pavel (no “Pasha” he!) Abdulmanov, the school history teacher who delivers Putin’s pablum with enthusiasm and who wishes he could’ve met the worst of the worst of Stalin’s henchmen, notably the infamous torturer, Lavrentiy Beria.

Hidden Gem:

“The Mountains”

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