On a beautiful spring morning in Copenhagen, a newly minted superstar walked into the courtyard of the imposing Kunsthal Charlottenborg museum: Danish producer Helle Faber, whose “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” pulled what many called an upset to win the Best Documentary Oscar just five days before. Unbeknownst to some of the many people stopping to congratulate her on the short walk we take together across the city’s famous canal, the veteran is carrying the famed golden statuette inside a raggedly discrete moss green tote bag.
With the Oscars taking place later in the year, the ceremony coincided with the opening weekend of CPH:DOX, and the atmosphere on the ground was one of immense national pride — and great support from the documentary industry, too. Sitting down over coffee, Faber says it feels a little “insane” to be back in Denmark following a whirlwind few weeks in Los Angeles. On the plane home, the producer was invited to sit alongside the pilots in the cockpit — holding the Oscar safely on her lap, of course. As they landed, airport staff jetted 20-foot-tall columns of water into the sky, so Faber could be welcomed home with a rainbow. Everyone congratulated her, from security guards to Uber drivers to waitresses.
Helle Faber sitting alongside pilots on her flight back home from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, courtesy of Helle Faber
“Everybody on the plane last night had their hands on this guy,” jokes Faber as the Queen’s marching band briefly interrupts our conversation with their daily midday procession. She gestures to get up to show me the fanfare and then remembers the statuette sitting on the table. It’s like she can’t quite believe it yet.
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” co-directed by American filmmaker David Borenstein and Russian schoolteacher-turned-filmmaker Pavel Talankin, sees the latter grant an inside view into how Russia turned schools into propaganda machines during the war in Ukraine. The doc, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025, had a slow-burning festival run, becoming an unlikely Oscar nominee for best documentary, and pulling one of the awards’ biggest upsets when it won over Netflix-backed favorite “The Perfect Neighbor.”
“We were up against Netflix and what felt like all the publicists in the world,” jokes a good-humored Faber. “We had to do everything by ourselves. It’s been very grassroots. We relied on people offering free screenings; we couldn’t afford Soho House previews, food and drinks or anything like that. We had to make it happen with people who just wanted to support us. We put a lot of effort into the digital campaign, so eventually it started to feel like we actually had some momentum. When we got the nomination, then, I thought we actually had a chance.” She points out, however, that “you don’t get anywhere without a strong film.” “And we had a strong film,” she says with a smile.
Helle Faber poses with the mighty Oscar statuette from a Copenhagen cafe, courtesy of Rafa Sales Ross
Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles while packing his bag ahead of flying back home to Copenhagen, Borenstein says the shock hasn’t quite dissipated yet. “The last few days have been really, really crazy.”
The director echoes Faber in his slow-burning confidence on their possible win ahead of the ceremony, adding they were “the last to start campaigning out of the Oscars shortlist.” “Many of these films have been campaigning since the beginning of the year, and we probably would have done the same thing if we had knowledge of what an Oscar campaign was. We didn’t know about the process. It was definitely not until the fall that we started dreaming of the fact that maybe we could go for it.”
So how did it feel to have his name called up onstage on March 15? “It was a huge shock and then I immediately went into game mode, like, I’ve got to get up there and give a speech. What you get thrown into after is a tremendous amount of pomp and circumstance. You get sent into this backstage area and do more interviews. Then immediately after, you have your team come celebrate with you, and you go to these parties.”
David Borenstein talks to the BBC from the disabled toilet at a post-Oscar party, courtesy of David Borenstein
In one such party, the filmmaker had to resort to a disabled bathroom when desperately searching for a quiet corner to give an interview to the BBC. “I mean, that’s the picture of the night,” he funnily quips when sharing a snippet of himself, sitting on the toilet with a glass of champagne in one hand, a phone in the other, and his shiny new award sitting atop the sink. “Definitely nothing sank in on that night,” he goes on. “The day after, I suddenly realized how tired I was. I didn’t even get out of bed. It’s crazy. I suppose it’s sinking in right now.”
Borenstein gave the most openly political acceptance speech of the evening, where he said his film 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. When we act complicit when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it. We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”
Helle Faber and David Borenstein with their Oscar statuettes, courtesy of David Borenstein
Asked about why he felt it was so important to say such words on Hollywood’s most prominent stage, the director says they made the film to “show what was behind the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” but, after premiering right at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term, the story “started to take on a double meaning.” “It became a broader story about how institutions and democracy die.”
“When I was sitting at the ceremony, I knew I wanted to deliver a speech that was talking about Russia but also about the United States,” he goes on. “I thought it was important. What I learned about resistance is that, when we have the capacity to say something, it’s important to say something. If Pasha, as a small-town teacher in Kaibosh, found his voice, then why can’t the rest of us? He had so much at stake; we have much less. Let’s just say what needs to be said.”
Faber adds Borenstein’s speech also fed into their overall strategy with “Mr. Nobody Against Putn.” “When you have a film that exposes a very brave man, you need to be brave as a director and as a producer,” she says. “I’m so happy about the speech David gave. Many people felt the film resonated with what is going on in the U.S. today. I also feel the Oscar show revealed that people don’t want to talk about what is going on anymore. There were so few statements like that on that night. If it had been three years ago, it would have been something completely different. Everyone would have made some kind of statement against what is going on in the U.S. Maybe Hollywood has been silenced. Or it silenced itself.”
David Borenstein poses with the Oscar and the BBC Storyville’s Lucie Kon, whom he called “absolutely key” and “the first to support” “Mr Nobody Against Putin,” courtesy of David Borenstein
Borenstein highlights he’s “scared shitless of what’s going to happen with the media landscape in America once Paramount gobbles up so much of the media landscape in this country,” referring to the recently announced Paramount-Warner Bros. deal. “What’s happening right now in America is actually happening quicker than it happened in Russia during Putin’s first few years. The scale of media consolidation we’ve seen with CBS and what we’re going to see with CNN and Paramount is really startling. If you don’t protect your institutions, you will lose them. How are we not just screaming at the top of our lungs from very tall buildings?”
Relatedly, the director says he made his film in Denmark because it is “so hard to get funding in America right now” for a project like “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” Borenstein, who previously also lived in China, “knew the strength of the Danish public system and how they had some of the only institutions that would invest in such a high-risk political project.”
“I’m an American who lives in Europe because this is where I can get the funding to make the films I want to make,” he goes on. “It’s really important to have alternative models to the American system, and important right now for Europe to be supporting itself and not allow technological trends and the media landscape in America to define it.”
Helle Faber’s plane pilot cheerfully poses with her Oscar statuette upon arrival to Copenhagen, courtesy of Helle Faber
During the last days of the Oscar trail, most of the film’s European partners travelled to Los Angeles. Meeting everyone on the ground made Borenstein’s “heart full.” “We were this big, awkward European Union team with people from the BBC, Czech and Danish film institutes, and broadcasters from all around Europe,” he says. “Part of me during this Oscars race thought we were not powerful. How could we ever go against streamers? But then at the Oscars, we had the loudest cheering section.”
“I just had this realization that we have so much strength in this international, European co-production model,” he adds. “We had strong advocates passionate about the film in different countries, speaking different languages, and firmly behind our film. This gave us strength.” Faber agrees, saying the Danish public film institutions allow producers “to make films like this and take risks.”
“I can’t underline enough how important the public institutions are in Denmark and all over the world,” notes the producer. “In the U.S., you don’t have that anymore. We must support these institutions in Europe if we want to secure democracy and freedom of speech.”
“Mr Nobody Against Putin” is produced by Helle Faber at madeincopenhagen and co-produced by Alžběta Karásková and Radovan Síbrt at Czech production company Pink. Other co-producers include the Danish Film Institute, Czech Film Fund, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, FilmFyn, Fritt ord, Hermod Lannungs Fond, BBC Storyville, DR, ZDF, ARTE, NRK, SVT, RTS, DR Sales, VPRO, UPP and Edithouse Fyn.
