Jewish BBC producer bags BAFTA for best documentary
Lucie Kon hails 'incredible' honour for ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ which now heads to Hollywood's Academy Awards on 15 March
A Jewish producer who commissioned a documentary that won a BAFTA this week says she is “flabbergasted, proud and so excited” at the honour.
Lucie Kon, a commissioning editor and executive producer for BBC Storyville, spoke to Jewish News after “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” won the coveted award at Sunday evening’s ceremony in central London.
The 89 minute feature is a collection of footage secretly kept by co-director and former school videographer Pavel Talankin, who collaborated with Denmark-based American filmmaker David Borenstein, to record events after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Described as “a quiet schoolteacher in a small industrial town” who picks up his camera and “becomes an unlikely dissident”, the documentary uses the footage Talankin captures over a period of two years after “patriotic lessons and military drills begin replacing regular classes” to create “a chilling portrait of how propaganda seeps into everyday life and how even children are drawn into the machinery of war.”
Kon said: “From the moment I was pitched the story, I knew I had to be involved – that it had to be on the BBC, but I would never in a million years have thought it would have the impact that it has. Working with the team to shape and share this vital story, and now winning a BAFTA for work that I have loved and been so lucky to do, is just incredible.”
It’s not the first award for Kon, who also won an Emmy for Best Current Affairs Documentary for “We Will Dance Again”, the harrowing story of the 7 October 2023 Nova Music Festival massacre in Israel.
In April 2023, she was also nominated for a National Television Award for a moving documentary about the late Dame Deborah James, who lost her five-year battle with bowel cancer in June 2022 at the age of 40. The two women met whilst both battling cancer.
The other nominees in the BAFTA documentary category were “2000 meters to Andriikva”, “Apocalypse in the Tropics”, “Cover-Up” and “The Perfect Neighbour”.
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” which premiered at Sundance and Göteborg last year, has been nominated for the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Watch the trailer here.
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