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20 November 2026 — 08:00 pm

The World’s Room
Mr. Nobody contra Putin

A film by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin - M/12+
Curated by Candela Varas
Cinema · Thought

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The incredible story of a Russian teacher who exposed Putin’s propaganda machine.

In one of the year’s most striking documentaries, a primary school teacher courageously and clandestinely reveals the aggressive militarisation promoted by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russian schools.

In the remote mining town of Karabash, teacher Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, tasked with filming the “patriotic education” sessions at his school, decides to turn the camera around and document the transformation of classrooms into spaces of indoctrination and recruitment for the war.

Between displays of forced loyalty and subtle signs of silent resistance, the film offers an intimate, unfiltered portrait of the erosion of truth and the courage required to resist, even in the face of serious personal risk.

Mr. Nobody Contra Putin is part of EscolaNova’s cinema cycle, The World’s Room — a meeting place where cinema asserts itself as a tool for reflection and change, curated by Candela Varas.

OSCARS® 2026 | Best Documentary

BAFTA Film Awards 2025 | Best Documentary

Sundance 2025 – World Cinema Documentary | Special Jury Award

Zagreb Dox 2025 | Big Stamp Award

Ann Arbor Film Festival 2025 | Audience Award

The Hague Movies that Matter Festival | Special Jury Award for Documentary

Danish Film Awards | Best Documentary

Prague One World Film Festival | Best Film – International Competition

DocsBarcelona 2025 | Amnesty International Catalonia Award



know + The World's Room

/ Artistic and technical credits

/Genre Documentary  /Nationality DK · CZ · DE  /Year 2025  
/Subtitles Portuguese · English  
/Directors David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin
/Screenplay David Borenstein
/Featuring Pavel Talankin

EscolaNova, Bordeira - Aljezur
20 November 2026 (fri) — 08:00 pm
Running time
90 min
Age Rating
M/12+
Tickets
5€ Single

Ticket office
The World’s Room
Curated by Candela Varas


A dark room, a white wall, a few chairs and cushions on a wool rug, or the warm summer open air. Each month, a new film appears, always accompanied by a special person, carefully chosen.

We believe that a film, after being screened, can continue to expand in a dialogue between the audience and someone we invite to think together. This person’s role is to guide the audience through a conversation that goes beyond what the work has already brought us - someone capable of offering unexpected perspectives, suggesting new readings and challenging perceptions.

We ask whether a film can open itself to other worlds beyond its own, and we pursue the richness of oblique viewpoints - those that lead us along transversal paths of thinking and feeling.

NIn this second edition, The World’s Room deepens this proposal, recovering the enchantment of the seventh art through a sharp, poetic, political, social and psychological contemporary cinema, with a selection of films curated by Candela Varas, in dialogue with guests from different fields of knowledge. One film and one person. One spectacle of images that we watch and then intuit within ourselves.


About the film selection, by Candela Varas

The Breath

The poetic word is born from breath, from the airy matter that passes through the body before becoming voice, rhythm and meaning. A poem is, above all, an organisation of breath. If poetry is made of air, cinema also breathes - not only because it is made of sound and silence, but above all because it is an art of time, pulse and oscillation. To think cinema through breathing is to shift the gaze from the image as surface to the image as duration.

This cycle invites us to think of films as a respiratory grammar, with their rhythm and metre: between cuts, silences and long takes, each work proposes its own cadence, alternating moments of full breath and held breath. It is also to notice how bodies and their breathing are filmed, and how we, as an audience, end up breathing with the film, feeling its pulse and inhabiting its time.
Detailed programme

30 January 2026
The Last Blue
/Director Gabriel Mascaro  /Guest Anabela Roque
20 February 2026
Living the Land
/Director Huo Meng  /Guest Telma Carvalho
27 March 2026
Looking at the Sun (In die Sonne Schauen)
/Director Mascha Schilinski  /Guest Maria João Cantinho
17 April 2026
The Stranger
/Director François Ozon  /Guest Cristina Robalo-Cordeiro
22 May 2026
Banzo
/Director Margarida Cardoso  /Guest Margarida Cardoso
07 August 2026
Orlando Pantera
/Director Catarina Alves Costa
21 August 2026
L'Aventura
/Director Sophie Letourneur
02 October 2026
O Misterioso olhar do Flamingo
/Director Diego Céspedes
09 October 2026
Dj Ahmet
/Director Georgi M. Unkovski
30 October 2026
Surda
/Director Eva Libertad
20 November 2026
Mr. Nobody contra Putin
/Director David Borenstein & Pavel Talankin
The next films will be announced soon.
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