Psst, have you heard? Russia is sowing divisiveness in an effort to sway voters, or worse. But this time the target isn’t a coming election but the Oscars, according to one of two filmmakers whose documentaries have been nominated for Academy Awards and drawn the ire of President Vladimir V. Putin.

That filmmaker, Feras Fayyad, spent nearly two years with several members of the White Helmets, the volunteer Syrian emergency medical workers, as they pulled survivors, bodies and severed limbs from mountains of rubble left by airstrikes.

He said that malignment of his film “Last Men in Aleppo” began soon after its premiere last year at Sundance, where it won a grand jury prize, and has only intensified since. In the Russian media, Mr. Fayyad has been accused of being a Western-funded propagandist whose film is a thinly disguised “Al-Qaeda promotional vehicle.” And, in what might catch members of the academy’s documentary branch by surprise, the film’s Oscar nomination was, according to Russia Insider, clear evidence that “the Hollywood celebrity industry is now an integral part of the U.S. state’s propaganda machine.”

“They just keep attacking you, accusing you,” Mr. Fayyad said during an interview last week at an Airbnb rental in the West Village. “And the people who work with me, my team, I don’t want them accused or attacked because of me.”