BELARUS – THE SHORT DREAM OF FREEDOM
Since the uprisings in Belarus in 2020, many citizens and leading opposition figures have had to leave the country. We meet them in exile in Poland and Germany, where they continue to fight for a better future for their country.
Protests of historic proportions shook Belarus after the rigged elections in the summer of 2020. Hundreds of thousands of people protested against the state authorities. This was the first time in the decades-long rule of autocrat Alexander Lukashenko that such events had occurred, and the regime brutally suppressed these peaceful protests, incarcerating and torturing protesters. Belarusians in exile in Poland and Germany recount their experiences during the protests. Among others, we meet Alexander Azarov, a high-ranking Belarusian police officer, who has now switched sides and joined Bypol, a union of former Belarusian security officers that publishes secretly filmed footage of torture in Belarusian police units. Natalia and Mikhail Maksimov, former TV journalists with the public broadcaster ONT, were on duty on the day of the election in August, 2020. In Warsaw, Tatyana Khomich keeps fighting for her sister Maria Kolesnikova, the opposition figurehead who faces an 11-year prison sentence. The film interweaves archival footage of key events since the election in Belarus with testimonies from our protagonists. What has happened in Belarus since the 2020 elections? And can the people of Belarus still win the fight for their freedom?