Oscars 2026: ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ wins award for Best Documentary Feature

The award for Best Documentary Short went to All The Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards.

The film’s central figure and co-director, Pavel Talankin, is a teacher and activities director in a small-town school in Russia who captures Vladimir Putin’s propaganda and patriotism program for the nation’s youth after its invasion of Ukraine.

Talankin smuggled the footage he’d shot out of the country and collaborated on the documentary with American director David Borenstein.

The other competition in the category came from The Alabama Solution, Cutting Through Rocks and Come See Me in the Good Light.

On the other hand, the award for Best Documentary Short went to All The Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones. The film documents the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings.

The war in Ukraine has loomed large in Oscar documentary categories since it began. The Associated Press documentary 20 Days in Mariupol won best documentary feature in 2024. Last year, Porcelain War about artists in the conflict, was a nominee. And this year’s documentary short nominees included Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud about an American journalist killed in the early weeks of the war.