Many key figures of the Belarusian film industry are now living and working in exile, due to the brutal crackdown on political opposition and free expression by the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko that came with 2020’s uprising against election fraud, and the war in Ukraine. Some of them gathered at DOK Leipzig for a panel to discuss how best to keep Belarusian cinema culture alive, and give truthful voice to the nation’s stories.
To this end, the Belarusian Independent Film Academy was launched at the Berlinale European Film Market in February, and several of its founders — Volia Chajkouskaya, Irena Kacialovic, and Andrei Kutsila — spoke in Leipzig to raise awareness of its principles and aims.
Kacialovic, a film critic, set out the high stakes for Belarusian filmmakers, which include risks to physical safety as well as to their means to create: “Political persecution, to be clear, can mean arrest, torture, and several years in prison. Belarusian independent cinema is almost entirely abroad today, without first-country possibilities for financing, and for documentary filmmakers, without the possibility to film in the country.”
Chajkouskaya, a producer and director who founded the Northern Lights Film Festival, and the VODBLISK platform for watching independent Belarusian cinema online, started out as a producer in Belarus, before relocating to Estonia in 2018, frustrated, among other things, by a state funding system that lacks transparency and is “basically a relic of the Soviet Union.”
The Belarusian Independent Film Academy was formed for collective solidarity, in opposition to any form of state collaboration, she said. “We have a broader mission, basically almost a political mission, to advocate and lobby for Belarusian cinema around the world.” Their ultimate goal is to relocate the Academy back to Belarus once it gains independence from Lukashenko’s regime, to become the organisational foundation of the film industry in a democratic Belarus.
“The war in Ukraine was a major impetus to unite,” said Chajkouskaya, as Belarusian filmmakers wished to “tell the world our position,” and jointly express support for the Ukrainian people in their struggle against Russian occupation and a complicit Belarusian regime.
“We are really inspired to learn from our Ukrainian colleagues what they are doing about decolonisation,” she said, stressing the importance to recognise and nurture Belarusian culture, as distinct from Russian imperialistic power. “We have our own culture. And we want to be seen.”
Kutsila, who documented the mood of Belarus after the initial euphoria and suppression of the 2020 protests in When Flowers Are Not Silent (2021), and is now based in Warsaw, spoke of the power of the documentary format for making an impact beyond what can be seen in the news media, bringing “personal stories from personal perspectives,” even from exile.
“Belarusian voices should be present in the global market to understand the situation in Belarus, because without that it is really hard to understand the situation in the region,” he said. “Lukashenko suffocated the protests, and it was only after that, that our territory was used easily,” he said, referring to the role of the Belarusian regime in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The documentary Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus (2023), which had its world premiere yesterday at DOK Leipzig, follows three activists as they find ways to continue to fight for political change in Belarus. Its director Juliane Tutein, and cinematographer Siarhei Kavaliou, participated in the panel.
Tutein, who is from Germany, acknowledged the lesser risk faced by westerners when shooting in Belarus (though she has not returned since the war in Ukraine escalated, and the danger increased.) The most troubling thing for her about making the film was knowing that “there is always a risk for your protagonists,” she said, even as they grant permission because they believe in its importance. She relied heavily on collaborators such as Kavaliou inside Belarus for local knowledge, she said.
Kavaliou has since been living in Tbilisi and Warsaw, with eight apartments in the last one and a half years as his unstable reality. He said that he had gotten used to the safety risks when working in television as a cameraman in Belarus for more than ten years, and that, “like a frog in boiling water,” it became difficult to evaluate danger, until reaching relative safety in exile.
One panel audience member, reflecting on her own experience of displacement, offered a hopeful perspective: “One of the most beautiful things about being in exile is that you can imagine what people living in absolute fear cannot. Lukashenko and his people want to control your lives and history so you can’t imagine an aftermath. And you can. That is what being in exile means.”
