THEMOVIES

This black comedy shows how life in the remote town of Karabash in the Ural Mountains is turned upside down after February 24, 2022—the day of the large-scale Russian invasion, the “Special Operation” of Ukraine. Pasha (Pavel Talankin) works as a videographer and events coordinator at the local secondary school. In a voice-over, Pasha speaks lovingly about his hometown, the school, and his students. Life far from the Kremlin was relatively peaceful until politics, with its absurd propaganda machine, began grooming new generations for reactionary militarism. As the local videographer, Pasha is expected to film the teachers’ propaganda messages and send them to the central Ministry of Education. We hear Putin say: “Wars are not won by generals but by teachers.” Pasha commits small acts of resistance, but above all he shows with razor-sharp clarity how the poison of propaganda seeps into the education system. For Pasha, continuing to go along with the system becomes untenable. Ultimately, with a heavy heart, he finds himself forced to flee Russia and go into hiding in the West. A must-watch film about ideological warfare, with implications reaching far beyond Russia. Pasha is, in fact, Mr. Somebody.