September 13, Pozirk. Belarusian filmmaker Andrej Kuciła’s documentary Letters from the Silenced Country won the Golden Globes Impact Prize for Documentary at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
The film follows five Belarusians, whose lives have been disrupted by state violence and politically-motivated repression, offering a portrait of life in contemporary Belarus.
Each story in the film shows a different experience of reprisals. The characters include a father who hides from surveillance to avoid arrest and separation from his daughter; a former criminal investigator who fled Belarus; a student convicted for participating in protests; and 50-year-old dissident Vitold Ašurak, who died in prison.
The jury said Letters from the Silenced Country puts a human face on a crisis often reduced to headlines and statistics, showing the difficult choices people make to preserve their humanity. The film’s story extends beyond Belarus, resonating with anyone who has loved someone from a distance or struggled to maintain their identity under pressure to disappear, it noted.
“We never expected to be selected for a festival like this,” Kuciła told Pozirk earlier this year. “We Belarusians know very well what is happening within our country. We feel our own pain. But how can we raise awareness about our problem? Art, in a sense, broadens these possibilities. We thought it might help people far beyond our country’s borders understand what we have gone through, what we are going through and what might happen to us in the future. And to dispel the stereotype that often confuses us with Russians or equates us with Russian politics, or even the policies of the Belarusian regime.”
