When Moscow invaded Ukraine, Pavel Talankin, a staff member at a secondary school in Russia's Ural Mountains, was ordered to film patriotic lessons, songs and morning drills.

Talankin, the school's event organiser and also a keen videographer, found the propaganda work so depressing that he wanted to quit his job in the industrial town of Karabash.

Then he received what he says was the strangest message of his life.

A Europe-based filmmaker got in touch, offering to collaborate on a project to document the abrupt militarisation of Talankin's school in the wake of Russia's February 2022 invasion of its neighbour.

Talankin had earlier seen a post from a Russian company looking for people whose jobs had been affected by the war. Talankin said he was ready to talk.

After receiving the foreigner's offer Talankin did not sleep all night.

The project changed his life forever.

After teaming up with David Borenstein and shooting many hours of footage, Talankin last summer fled Russia with seven hard discs, leaving behind his mother, brothers and sisters and the town he loved.

Using the smuggled-out footage Borenstein, a Denmark-based US filmmaker, directed what became "Mr Nobody Against Putin", an award-winning 90-minute documentary which exposes the intensity of the propaganda at Talankin's school........

© International Business Times