Belsat TV

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. “It’s sad life’s so short,” he says.

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.

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

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.

Alisa is a 26-year-old student at the film academy in Kyiv. Her life is pretty normal until the day that President Viktor Yanukovych refuses to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Suddenly, everything changes: protests erupt in the capital, with the inhabitants demanding the president’s resignation.

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

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.

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.