Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin won the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, held March 15 in LA. The film, produced by Helle Faber of Made in Copenhagen and Alžběta Karásková & Radovan Síbrt of Prague-based PINK, follows a Russian teacher (Talankin) who documents the Putin administration’s actions in controlling public perception of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” said the film’s protagonist and co-director Talankin via a translator on receiving the award.
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein added. “You lose it through countless small little acts of complicity.”
The Oscar® for Best Doc Short went to All the Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel. In the film, well-known CBS broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and his friend, photographer Lou Bopp, visit the homes of kids who lost their lives in school shootings.
“I felt that this approach Steve was taking was just a beautiful way of reframing the issue and taking it out of the usual political debate,” Seftel told Business Doc Europe in February 2026, “and focusing on the human toll this was taking and the ripple it leaves with these families who no longer have a child, but just have an empty room.”
Two hundred and one films were eligible for the Doc Feature category, while 117 films qualified in the Short Doc category.
The documentary Feature Film nominations were:
- The Alabama Solution by Andrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman
- Come See Me in the Good Light by Ryan White
- Cutting through Rocks by Sara Khaki, Mohammadreza Eyni
- Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein
- The Perfect Neighbor by Geeta Gandbhir
Documentary Short Film nominations:
- All the Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel
- Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud by Brent Renaud, Craig Renaud
- Children No More: Were and Are Gone by Hilla Medalia
- The Devil Is Busy by Christalyn Hampton & Geeta Gandbhir
- Perfectly a Strangeness by Alison McAlpine
