Belsat TV

Two men, a Finn and a Belarusian live alone, on a lake's island.

What will happen if the processes that are currently taking place in Belarus and with Belarusians do not stop and reach the point of absurdity? The processes of social disunity, the habit of everyday fear in some, and the impunity of others. The processes of internal migration and reinforcement of self-censorship, the reign of nonsense and meaninglessness. The process of destruction and simultaneous revival of the Belarusian language and culture. The processes of denigration of human dignity and creation of those guilty without the proof of their guilt. Processes of inflating militaristic sentiments and hatred of foreigners and dissenters. The process of Russia’s taking over Belarus and dragging it into a senseless war.

Belarusian vlogger and young farmer Semyon, who is a deeply religious man, always loving to philosophize in relation to democracy, admire his mother and share this with the whole world. For five years now, he has been living in a village with two little sons and raise sheep. It would seem that a harmonious existence in the wilderness can not hinder anything...

Druya is a small and old town. The most fascinating about it is not its history, not specific dates and names of people, but the atmosphere. Looking at the surviving walls and furnishings, the imagination itself depicts the history of this place. Sometimes in the empty half-abandoned architectural monuments one can feel the rumble of past epochs, the weight of centuries oversaturated with events.

KGB officers present junior schoolchildren with a golden ticket granting a tour around the magical KGB building. There, kids are shown the supernatural working methods of the most important and patriotic agency in the country: non-contact fighting, blindfolded shooting, and telepathy. At the end of the excursion, the KGB employees give the most resilient students the opportunity to feel like real patriots and personally get a confession from the traitors to the country with the help of electric shocks.

When Sasha turned 11, "it became dark around and it has been dark ever since." Many things in Sasha's life are surprising. Why is his work at the factory a great joy rather than a boring obligation? Why does he turn on the lights after sunset? He has been through a lot. Bullied and beaten in his childhood, Sasha was often very ill. Why does he never complain? It's a miracle he can hear at all. So he listens to the world around him, to what his fellow passengers on the bus talk about. Through these conversations about minor or important, private or global, fleeting and eternal things alike, Sasha gets to know people, as well as himself.

There are 36 days left before Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. On another Baptism of Christ holiday an ice hole was made in a pond in a bedroom suburb of Kyiv. Church bells are heard on the shore, people are undressing, standing in line... In this short observational film, closeups of people of different ages, lines of naked bodies and short conversations tell us about the fragility of life, the contradictions of human faith and the joy of existence.

The film tells four personal stories of one Crimean Tatar family. Their story concentrates, as in a lens, the extensive experience of people living under occupation. The difficulties, which affect this family, are experienced by the larger community and evolve extreme emotions. The main motive of the film is not the regime and the occupation itself, but its consequences, how it affects the lives of ordinary people who simply want to live, to love and to have a family.

In 1937, most members of the Belarusian intelligentsia, including poets, were shot dead in Minsk on a "legal" basis. A few years later, their names were rehabilitated. However, despite this, most of them are still forgotten. 80 years after the tragedy, the young screenwriter begins to collect a portrait of these poets, their life in the 20-30s of the last century. Who were these people? What were their quirks? What inspired them, what they dreamed of and missed the most?

Due to the lack of places in Belarusian prisons, an OMON employee has to take in 3 political prisoners for 2 weeks.

Can one tear oneself from hearth and home, even if it is very boring and lonely there? Andrei, a small man in a small place, has spent 15 years of his life working in a community club. But today the large hall is empty; from time to time children come in here to sing. Meanwhile real Belarusian culture with its authentic singing conceals itself far from the state institution in a small local country house. Every now and then Andrei calls on here. Nevertheless he tries hard to revive virtually dead cultural center, his only place and reason for existence.

Aliaksiej Ščadroŭ used to work as a paramedic in an ambulance emergency service in Belarus. His ambulance was often called to collect homeless people from the streets, but after a few kilometres the crew would throw them away. Once in prison, Aliaksiej found himself unwanted too. The time behind bars changed the former paramedic’s outlook on life. Following his release, Aliaksiej led a vagrant’s life and lived in church buildings. After that he settled in the Aliaksandraŭka village where he organised unofficial asylum —he started to admit poor, disabled people, take care of them, help them obtain reissued passports, and enable them to return to a normal way of life. Unfortunately, the local authorities have not been appreciative of Aliaksiej’s initiative...

Another rigging of the presidential election in Belarus in 2020 led to massive civil resistance which the country had never experienced before. Brutal suppression of the peaceful protests resulted in more massive marches. Yet, the peaceful protests, having lasted for several months, did not achieve Alexander Lukashenko’s resignation from the president’s post he’s been holding for 27 years. Instead, political repressions in Belarus increased dramatically and became the largest in the history of Europe since the 1970s. The documentary focuses on the lives of Belarusian families who try to continue living and carry on despite being traumatised. Looking at their lives, we can see the pain and hope, feel the fear and determination of these people. An extraordinarily moving film from a Belarusian director living in Poland.

A young Belarusian artist leaves her husband behind in Minsk to visit her friend, the elderly painter Andrzej Strumillo, in his idyllic manor house in Poland. It’s a fairy-tale place, surrounded by marshland and a river. There are horses, for which the two artists share a passion, as well as dogs. It has been two years since her last visit. For her, the trip offers a welcome diversion from city life; for him, it’s a break from a lonely existence marked by old age: a curved spine, painful knees.

"Love in Belarus" is love through the prison bars for Nasta Palazhanka and Dzmitry Dashkevich . They met in the "Young Front" - illegal Democratic organization. After protests in December 2010, they were put in prison. After detention in a KGB pretrial center Nasta was sentenced to a year of probation, and Dmitry was thrown in jail almost for three years. During his detention Dzmitry’s mom died, and Nastya remained the sole support for his father. The young couple married in prison, and on August 28, 2013 the leader of the "Young Front " was released. The lovers wrote thousands of letters to each other from behind the bars. These letters tell us about the feelings of young Belarusians, who fell in love in the time of the dictatorship.

Out of the 30 students that graduated from Karalina's class at a Minsk conservatory, only one chose to remain in the country. The totalitarian Belarus is gradually becoming deserted, and well-educated people are migrating in droves to the furthest reaches of the world in search of happiness, better career opportunities and a dignified life. I Grew Up As You Slept is a story about emigration, nostalgia and longing for one's family, friends and country. Karalina's film journey, during which she visits her grandmother, who lives in the depopulated Belarusian village of Achaniany, is primarily a journey through time to the land of childhood and memories.

Zoya works in a store. She gets a call from her distant son, but hears only gunshots, screams, and explosions. Zoya starts searching for her son, who may have died in the war, but everyone convinces her that there is no war.

In the midst of revolution and civil war, a filmmaker sets out to find herself. From the barricades of Maidan Square, to the safety of a Parisian apartment, Alisa struggles with her love for boyfriend Stephane, her impartiality as a journalist and her duties as a proud Ukrainian. Treading the line between director and subject, will Alisa leave this conflict with her love and her life, intact?

Minsk. December 19th 2010. After the Belarus government blatantly hijacked the results of the presidential election, tens of thousands of Belarusians came to the streets in a peaceful protest. Tired of a ubiquitous system of lies, these demonstrators set their sights on truth and freedom.

An old woman lives in a remote village in Belarus. As the end of her live approaches, she starts to read the worn-out notebooks of her daughter. Together we go on a journey to the unknown world of a person who is abandoned and forgotten by everybody.