A court in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region has banned the Oscar-winning documentary *Mr Nobody Against Putin* from several streaming platforms, marking the first known court-driven restriction on the film inside Russia.
According to AFP’s report carried by The Guardian, the court ruled on the historical event date, 2026-03-26, that the documentary promoted “terrorism” and “negative attitudes toward the current government.” The film was also said to have been removed from three Russian streaming services.
The documentary follows pro-war propaganda lessons inside a school in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. It was assembled from two years of footage secretly filmed by school videographer Pavel Talankin, who later smuggled the material out of the country. The film includes scenes of children hearing lectures about “denazifying” Ukraine, speeches by war veterans, grenade-throwing contests and instructions on handling guns.
The ruling comes after Russia’s Kremlin-appointed human rights council complained about the film. The council said the production used images of minors without parental consent and said it would ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to open an investigation. The court also objected to the film’s use of the white-blue-white flag, a symbol used by some anti-war opposition figures but banned in Russia as extremist.
The significance of the decision goes beyond distribution. The Guardian reported that this is the first known use of the courts to block access to the film, even though bootleg copies are already widely available online. That detail matters because it shows the state’s censorship system continuing to adapt after years of wider suppression of dissent over the war in Ukraine.
The film’s backstory is inseparable from the wartime climate it documents. Since launching its full-scale assault on Ukraine four years ago, the Kremlin has tightened restrictions on criticism of the war and pushed its version of events into schools through curriculum changes and public messaging. Talankin left Russia in 2024, and the documentary has since become one of the most visible accounts of how that messaging reaches students.
The Oscar that the film won earlier in March, and the Bafta it received in February, gave it a global audience before the Russian ban. But the court action is a reminder that awards attention does not insulate politically sensitive work from domestic retaliation. In this case, the ruling does not appear to settle the film’s public profile so much as confirm that Russian authorities still regard it as a threat worth restricting.
For viewers outside Russia, the decision may have limited immediate effect because the film already circulates online. Inside Russia, however, the court order formalizes the state’s position: a documentary about schoolroom propaganda is itself being treated as a form of political harm.
