Belarus at the Berlinale: an encounter with three protagonists of the documentary “Courage”.
There is a scene in Aliaksei Paluyan’s film “Courage” where Maryna Yakubovich is sitting with her husband in their kitchen in Minsk. They talk about their young son’s future prospects. Maybe one of them will be arrested, you think. Or they stop working for democracy and later send their son to school in Minsk, where he learns that Alexander Lukashenko is the father of his country. You also talk about a third option, exile.
But then there seems to be a fourth when, in August 2020, after the presidential elections in Belarus, which were considered to be rigged, people took to the streets and asked Lukashenko to vacate his post. There are hundreds of thousands, including Maryna Yakubovich. They carry the red and white flag, which was chosen as the national flag of Belarus after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and which Alexander Lukashenko abolished in 1995. Red and white are now the colors of the opposition. “Get away, get away,” shout the demonstrators. They show the sign of victory. These images go around the world. “We are so many,” says Maryna Yakubovich in “Courage”. “We make history,” adds her colleague Pavel. The goal seems so close. Then come the water cannons, tear gas, clubs. Desperately fighting people are dragged into police cars. And Aliaksei Paluyan is flying to Berlin to bring this footage to safety. The planned return no longer takes place.
We meet in the premises of the film distributor Rise and Shine, which has its office in a converted factory building on Schlesische Strasse in Kreuzberg. Maryna Yakubovich, Aliaksei Paluyan and Pavel Haradnitski, another film protagonist, have come to present their documentary at this year’s Berlinale. Everyone is sitting around the big table at Rise and Shine, someone is making coffee, putting a few cookies on the table, a bottle of water. And Maryna Yakubovich tells about the third option.
The family wants to celebrate the third birthday of their little son on May 27, 2021 in Minsk, together with their grandparents. The decision to leave has already been made. They bought their tickets for the flight to Kiev. Then on May 23, the Ryanair plane, in which the journalist Roman Protassewitsch is sitting, will be taken from the sky. They know they can’t wait any longer. On May 25th they take the last flight of Ukranian International Airways. “Exile is the price,” says Aliaksei Paluyan.
Pavel Haradnitski, a 38-year-old with blond hair and a black T-shirt, has been in Kiev since April. He was arrested at a pop concert he was playing in Minsk. Someone in the audience had unfurled a white and red flag, took a picture. A judge sentenced him to 15 days in prison via Skype. That was two weeks after “Courage” was seen at the Berlinale industry event in early March. Is there a connection? “The film was geoblocked for Belarus,” says Aliaksei Paluyan. He made sure of that. But he also asks this question.
35,000 people have been arrested in Belarus since August 2020. “People are arrested who wear white socks with red stripes,” says Maryna Yakubovich. Pavel Haradnitski flew on April 23, together with his wife, a psychologist who now works online and earns money with it, as well as with the cat and the dog. Only the camerawoman stayed in Minsk, a constant cause for concern for Aliaksei Paluyan.
They are not homesick yet, nor do they enjoy the feeling of security. “I almost forgot,” says Maryna Yakubovich. In Minsk she couldn’t even relax in the playground because of all the police officers. “Always pressure, pressure, pressure,” says Pavel Haradnitski. In Belarus he was on the black list, practically banned from working, in Kiev he has now got his first film role. You are now part of the Belarusian exile community in Ukraine, including many artists who meet on the Maidan on Sundays.
The three have known each other for a long time. Aliaksei Paluyan reports how, as a computer science student in Minsk, he got into this theater performance in an apartment, without chairs, without tickets. It was a performance by the Belarus Free Theater, which includes Maryna Yakubovich and Pavel Haradnitski. But this theater is only free underground. It was this work that the film originally wanted to honor, the secret rehearsals, led by a director who was connected via Skype from exile in London, the secret performances, the taboo subjects of the plays: the death penalty or the disappearance of opposition members.
Aliaksei Paluyan is the youngest of them, he is only 31 years old. He almost was born in Bernau, he says. His parents worked there for the Soviet Army, the father a teacher, the mother a doctor. The mother returned to Russia to give birth, two weeks later the wall fell and there was no return. He’s been living in Germany since 2012. He came to study film at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, “Courage” is his thesis. It is the first Belarusian film that has ever been shown at the Berlinale. And it is such a passionate and partisan canvas work that has not been seen in a long time. A work of art that is part of the struggle, a deeply political film, driven by the question of what art can achieve under repressive conditions.
In the West, the kidnapping of Roman Protassevich has drawn attention back to Belarus, and it is now benefiting the film. On the one hand that’s great, on the other hand they find it frustrating. Roman Protassevich’s kidnapping came as a shock, but many incredible things have happened in Belarus since last August, says Maryna Yakubovich, only that they have caused less of a stir in Europe. She reports on Witold Ashurok. The opposition politician died of cardiac arrest in a penal colony at the end of May, the authorities say. None of the three believe in that.
It is now getting very emotional in this Kreuzberg office when Marina Yakubovich talks about the demonstrations on Women’s Day in March, the protest march of the pensioners, the march of the disabled. “Old men have been beaten, women! They used stun grenades against pensioners. ”She cries and Aliaksei Paluyan jumps up and fetches handkerchiefs. “We did everything in Belarus. We shouted: Please help us. Nobody heard us. ”The disappointment at the indifference in Europe is great. Aliaksei Paluyan says that the EU has only woken up again now that an airplane in which Western Europeans were also seated was affected. As if they alone weren’t worth it, these ten million people in his country. “Aren’t Belarusian people important?”
He never tires of emphasizing the geographical proximity between Berlin and Minsk: only a good 900 kilometers, an hour’s flight away. Europe is the hope, the yardstick, the slide that shows what is happening there, the arrests, the political repression.
Aliaksei Paluyan calls the EU a toothless tiger, lax the announced sanctions after Protassevich’s kidnapping. “You have to get the banks off the Swift system,” he says. Exclusion from the international payment system would hit the country hard, and Belarus would become a block on Russia’s leg. And the impact on the Belarusians? “They are ready for the sanctions, they are ready to suffer.” That is what the three of them say unanimously. “If the EU doesn’t react harshly now, that’s a signal to Lukashenko that he can do what he wants.”
On Friday afternoon, before your film has its world premiere in the open-air cinema on Museum Island, you will take part in an event at the Hessian state representation. The Hessian film subsidy supported the film, and Svetlana Tichanowskaja, who might be Belarusian president if everything had gone right in the elections last year, is also coming to the press conference. Instead, she fled to Lithuania after the election and her husband is in prison.
Svetlana Tichanowskaja is using the new awareness for her country, has spoken to politicians and promoted sanctions. Now she takes Aliaksei Paluyan’s hands before they both sit on the podium. Svetlana Tichanovskaya is more diplomatic than the film director. She praised Germany as the most important partner of the Belarusian democracy movement. Now sanctions, especially economic sanctions, are important against individuals, against everyone who supports Lukashenko. She says that she can only communicate with her husband through a lawyer, and at the end she appeals: “Please write letters to the political prisoners, show Belarusian art, hang our flag in the window. Svetlana Tichanowskaja then gives television interviews in the garden of the state representation. They keep their eyes on five bodyguards in blue suits with slim sunglasses.
Maryna Yakubovich and Pavel Haradnitski do not approach her. She is the woman they chose. “But we’re not allowed to take a photo with her,” they say. They are afraid that they could endanger their parents living in Minsk. Aliaksei Paluyan does not show this reluctance, but his parents also live in Belarus. He doesn’t want to talk about the danger to which he is exposing her and himself. Instead, he speaks of the guilt he feels for living in safety.
In the evening at the world premiere on Museum Island, every viewer receives a picture of a political prisoner, on the back of which is the address of the prison to which one can write. It was Aliaksei Paluyan’s idea. Before the film starts, the viewers hold these images up. Svetlana Tichanovskaya is also here. She is holding her husband’s picture.
When the credits roll, the first in the audience get up, there is a standing ovation for several minutes. Aliaksei Paluyan was overwhelmed by this premiere when we spoke on the phone the next day. Hardly a picture was left behind.
“Courage” will be released in German cinemas on July 1st.
