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THE WATCH CLUB

 

We had to wait until after the Academy Awards to schedule this month’s edition of our interview program because our guest has been quite busy: David Borenstein just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film for MR NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN!

 

When the war in Ukraine began, the Russian government ordered all public school educators to institute patriotic rituals. For Pavel Talankin, these grooming programs represented an alarming reversal of the relative cultural openness he’d experienced as a public school student in a small industrial town in southeast Russia. While working as his alma mater’s videographer, he documented hours of footage of these exercises, and then used them to blow the whistle on Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian government.

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When Borenstein accepted the Oscar, he made one of the night’s most notable speeches, explaining that his team’s film “is about how you lose your country.” Just a few days ago, Russia responded to the film’s surprise Oscar win unsurprisingly – by banning the film. 

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Watch MR NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN, available on Prime Video, Apple TV and other streaming platforms. Then make plans to join us in THE WATCH CLUB for a live Q&A with director David Borenstein in a special lunchtime edition at 12:30 p.m. ET Monday, March 30. Or watch the interview anytime afterward in our Watch Club archive.

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