Maker of ‘Mr Nobody Against Putin’ celebrated her Oscar with Hollywood latke feast

To celebrate, they went to the Governors Ball, where stars have their Oscar trophies engraved, and ate “amazing food” – including latkes – before going to the Vanity Fair Ball for burgers, pizza and champagne alongside the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Kylie Jenner, Jessie Buckley and Mick Jagger.

“Everyone was letting their hair down and just having a nice time,” she says, brushing off a snub from Chalamet, who, dressed head to toe in white leather, refused to pose for a selfie with Kon to show her daughter.

To accompany her forest-green dress, Kon wore a chai and Magen David necklace and Magen David earrings.

“I bought these [earrings] for the premiere of We Will Dance Again,” says Kon, who belongs to Alyth shul, showing them off. “The Magen David I had put in [to the necklace] when I was in Israel last summer. I never felt the need to wear them before, but now I feel the need very strongly. They’re not political statements; they are my identity, and I’m proud of who I am, and I don’t want to hide.”

The Oscar success of the film– made for BBC’s documentary wing Storyville and created by Kon with Jewish director David Borenstein and producer Radovan Síbrt – is a moment of real Jewish pride. “We can’t shout too much about the fact that the three of us are Jews,” she says. “Radovan lives in the Czech Republic; his kids go to a Jewish school. David lives in Denmark; his kids go to a Jewish school.

“I live in London and my kids went to Jewish schools. My daughter runs Sheffield University JSoc – she’s a proud Jew. I have a son who’s proud. We’re proud Jews.”

Mr Nobody Against Putin tells the story of Russian teacher-turned director Pavel Talankin’s quiet resistance against Russian state propaganda following the invasion of Ukraine. When Kon was first approached with the idea for the film – at the end of a long list of suggestions that did little to grab her attention – she instantly wanted to be involved.

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“I thought, ‘Baruch Hashem! This is extraordinary.’ This was a young man, a teacher working in a school who was filming kids being indoctrinated.”

One fascinating component was that Talankin’s mother was pro-Putin. Kon instantly wanted to know whether he would be able to get her on camera.

“Seeing that division within families is important. Families have been torn apart, it’s one of the terribly sad things about war.”

Her first instinct, however, was the safety and security issues involved – the safety of Talankin and his mother, and getting the material out of Russia. And this is what Kon had overview of throughout the film-making process.

Mr Nobody Against Putin features among Kon’s career highlights.

It follows her 2014 film Ebola Frontline for Panorama, which tracked NHS doctors and nurses fighting the deadly disease in West African clinics and was nominated for a Bafta; her 2018 two-part series for BBC2 We Are British Jews, which tracked eight youngsters exploring their identity and travelling to Israel; her 2020 Panorama documentary Britain’s Cancer Crisis, inspired by her own diagnosis with breast cancer during Covid; and BBC Storyville’s Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, about the Nova festival massacre of October 7.

Kon was the commissioning editor and executive producer of the 2024 film, which won an Emmy.

“October 7 hit me like it did everyone else in our community, and I wanted to tell the story of what had happened that day,” she says.

“I felt I was in pain and that there was very little I could do, then I suddenly had this moment of, ‘Hang on a minute, I commission international feature documentaries. I can put a call out and see if anyone’s got a story that they want to tell.’

“And then I was sent this taster tape of what became We Will Dance Again and I thought, ‘We have to do this.’”

She made it her mission to “persuade” her colleagues. After all, Kon says, there have been “lots of similar films about terrible attacks” in the past.

“This was another story about a terrible tragedy, an attack on a group of innocent people at a party, young people the same age as my kids, what happened to them that day and what they’ll always have to live with.”

She has stayed in touch with many of those she met through the making of We Will Dance Again. “I met the parents of people who were murdered, and young people who survived, who I will never lose touch with, who inspire me every day.”

Looking to her next Storyville project, Kon enthuses about Speechless, a two-parter by the Jewish Canadian film-maker Ric Esther Bienstock that deals with the battles on US campuses around anti-racism and transgender issues.

“A very large chunk of the second episode deals with Israel and Palestine on US campuses, and it’s mind-blowing. I’m proud to have commissioned that for Storyville,” Kon says.

She would also like to see We Are British Jews, made during Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership, “revisited” by the BBC.  “I think that should be done now, given everything that’s happened.

“It’s just as relevant, even more so now,” she says.