Mr Nobody Against Putin, the devastating portrait of a Russian primary school teacher who documented the state's indoctrination of young children to support the invasion of Ukraine, has won the Academy Award for best documentary feature.
The film's directors (Pavel Talankin, now living in exile in Europe, and his US co-director David Borenstein) collected the award at Sunday night's ceremony, beating out the heavily favoured The Perfect Neighbor and fellow nominees The Alabama Solution, Come See Me in the Good Light, and Cutting Through Rocks.
"Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless, small, little acts of complicity." said David Borenstein, accepting the award. "We all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think."
Talankin followed with an emotional appeal on behalf of civilians in countries where, in his words, "instead of shooting stars... they have shooting bombs and shooting drones," before urging the world to "stop all of these wars now."
He also said he had been struck by how often he drew parallels between Russia under Putin and the United States under the current administration: "A lot of my Russian colleagues and friends always said, 'No, no, it's not the same situation. It's actually happening quicker in America than it's been happening in Russia.' Trump is moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years."
The win makes this the third time this decade that a film sharply critical of the Kremlin has taken the top documentary prize. Navalny won in 2023, and 20 Days in Mariupol followed in 2024. Last year's winner, No Other Land, was an Israeli-Palestinian co-production documenting the destruction of a Palestinian community on the West Bank.
BEST DOCUMENTARY (RECENT WINNERS)
2026
Mr Nobody Against Putin (Pavel Talankin & David Borenstein).
2025
No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor).
2024
20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov).
2023
Navalny (Daniel Roher).