There are many symptoms of totalitarian sickness gripping Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus. You risk being arrested for wearing red and white together, the colours of the outlawed flag of the country’s opposition movement. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has been banned, which seems rather on the nose. But these are just some of the more farcical elements, the collateral comedy spinning from the deep repression, violence and psychological wounds charted in this sobering film that follows a trio of Belarusian activists, starting from the pandemic through to the invasion of Ukraine.
Director Juliane Tutein fashions a melancholic mood-piece which chronicles ineffectualness in the face of impregnable state machinery, and the meaning of resistance under such circumstances. Nina, who is 74, is a kind of Belarusian Batman; an indefatigable symbol of protest who is immune to repression because of her fame. Human rights activist Darya runs her organisation in exile in Vilnius after student activism landed her in hot water. Tanya has stuck it out near Minsk while her husband and son have fled to Kyiv, but her human-rights NGO and film festival are in the authorities’ crosshairs.
Stamina is, of course, part of the job description, as a local saying quoted here makes clear: “You think you’ve hit rock-bottom – then you hear knocking from below.” Diminutive Nina is the Jedi master of maintaining positivity under duress, but everyone depicted recognises the importance of incremental acts of defiance. A lack of civic participation, and the kind of political and cultural amnesia that has engendered that, may be what sped post-Soviet Belarus down the wrong path. Nina points to a lack of outrage over the regime’s alleged assassination of political opponents; Tanya’s husband thinks no such justice is possible when the bureaucracy is dominated by ex-KGB apparatchiks.
With no easy victories and the attention switching to Ukraine, not all of this dogged struggle makes compelling cinema. Darya’s thread is particularly slight, though the Ukrainians receiving her expat Belarusian association’s donations won’t care about that. If evil can be banal, then the same applies to good.
• Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus is on True Story on 12 December.
