PRESS REVIEWS

"Though it is rooted in Belarus, its story reaches far beyond one country’s borders, it speaks to anyone who has ever loved someone from a distance, or fought to stay connected to who they are under pressure to disappear. The way the director blends letters, drawings, and memory into the storytelling captures not only grief, but love, hope, and tenderness — the full range of what it means to remain human. It’s a powerful example of how a documentary can show how the most personal stories can also be the most universal."

"Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Andrei Kutsila’s Letters From The Silenced Country, a documentary about individuals living under the autocratic regime in Belarus."

"“Letters from the Silenced Country puts a human face on a crisis too often reduced to headlines and numbers, illustrating the impossible choices people make to hold on to their humanity,” the jury collectively said in a statement."

"Letters from a Silenced Country – which screened out of competition at the Venice IFF in September – is uncomfortable, urgent filmmaking from a director determined to put Belarus and the plight of its people back on the global agenda."

"Through my film, I want to give a voice to those who cannot speak – Belarusians living in a silenced country."

"With an abstract film idea, I dug deeper, seeking people who’d send their own or their relatives’ letters. I clung to this crucial literary foundation. But how do you make a film when you can’t return [to Belarus] and have only letters from people in prison?"

"Andrei Kutsila took on the challenge of making a documentary about political prisoners in Belarus. It’s also an artistic challenge: how to make a film about someone who can’t be filmed. I think he’s found a way."

"An exiled filmmaker, driven from his homeland for the “crime” of believing in democracy, to remind the Lido’s red-carpet spectacle what, in theory, the art of cinema is meant to do. Kutsila’s debut tears down Lukashenko’s dictatorship using the one weapon the police cannot confiscate"

""No matter how awful the situation is, the only thing that can empower and give us hope is solidarity, connection between people and love. So these are the things giving us hope," notes Kutsila. "And the film, I think, shows this.""

"For the first time in 40 years, a film about Belarus was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Andrei Kutsila worked on it for five years."

"Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila turns the correspondence of the imprisoned and exiled into a formally inventive, morally unflinching account of life under one of the world’s cruellest regimes."

"„This artistic implementation creates such a reflective distance and you really feel a little bit with her in prison”"

"It is breathtaking to discover the wealth of footage secretly filmed inside a country from which virtually nothing ever emerges."

"Documentaries like 'Letters From the Silenced Country' ask a great deal of their audiences. But these are precisely the stories that need to be told and heard. Its premiere in Venice, at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals, gives this important film the attention it deserves"

"I was forced to leave Belarus after protests against election fraud were brutally suppressed. I know the stories of those imprisoned by the regime. My sister was one of them — she was arrested, and she still cannot forget the screams of people who were tortured every night."

"Together, their stories form a moving portrait of everyday life shaped by persecution, separation and the constant effort to preserve dignity under an authoritarian regime."

"Animation can create visual continuity between testimony, memory and circumstances that may not be available to a camera, while the documentary structure keeps those individual stories as the organizing material."

"On the political front, Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila’s Listy (Letters From The Silenced Country) (Filmotor) looks at the plight of political prisoners in his homeland [...]"

"The film combines observational documentary with personal archives, surveillance footage, police recordings, found footage and animation based on drawings made in prison."

"Andrei Kutsila’s partially animated documentary Letters from the Silenced Country focuses on political repression in Belarus [...]"

"[...] combines archives, found footage and animation, as well as testimonies derived from letters written behind prison walls, to deliver a searing indictment of the regime [...]"

"The film’s focus on letters allows for an intimate glimpse into the lives of political prisoners and exiles, offering a deeper understanding beyond conventional reporting."

"Instead of offering a broad political analysis, the film focuses on individual stories of protest, imprisonment, escape and quiet everyday resistance as experienced by those involved."

"The film seeks to give voice to those who have been silenced, offering a powerful narrative that reflects the broader struggles of the Belarusian people."

"Through this recognition in Venice, their voices will now also be heard beyond Europe. The film once again puts the human rights situation under President Alexander Lukashenko in the spotlight [...]" — Elisabeth Lehmann, Commissioning Editor, DW Documentaries

"It is also a story of dignity, solidarity, love and the struggle to preserve one’s humanity in circumstances where freedom comes at a very real price."

"Rather than a broad political overview, the film focuses on individual stories, of protest, imprisonment, escape, and everyday resistance, told through the people living them."

"The film, which includes footage from a prison surveillance camera and live animation somewhat reminiscent of Persepolis, tells the story of the quiet machinery of repression in Belarus."

"Ashurak finds brief moments of mental freedom in these pictures, while the same images are also poetically embedded in the film."

"Andrei Kutsila’s account of Belarusian political prisoners assembled from prison correspondence, CCTV footage, video shot by KGB officers and animated sequences drawn by a woman arrested at twenty."