Courage (2021) by Aliaksei Paluyan:

Belarusians Take the Stage

Author

Oliver Okun

Abstract

[Smelastsʹ] / Courage (Aliaksei Paluyan [Aliakseĭ Paluian], 2021) is one of the first documentaries about the Belarusian uprising in 2020. Privileging observational mode and real footage of the protests, the film follows members of the dissident underground Belarus Free Theatre as they join the protest movement. Oliver Okun’s review explores how the film weaves together individual lives and choices of the protagonists, their work in political theatre, and the transformative history of 2020.

Keywords

Aliaksei Paluyan (Aliakseĭ Paluian); Maryna Yakubovich (Maryna Iakubovich); Pavel Haradnitski; Dzianis Tarasenka; Belarus; Belarus Free Theatre; post-Soviet; revolution; protest; authoritarianism; documentary film; Eastern European politics; Courage.

[Smelastsʹ] / Courage (Aliaksei Paluyan [Aliakseĭ Paluian], 2021, Germany) is the most significant cinematic record to date of Belarus’s 21st-century national awakening. Filmed at great peril to the crew during the 2020 protests, Courage is director Aliaksei Paluyan’s first full-length documentary film. It was produced in Germany by Living Pictures Production and premiered at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale Special section. It has since garnered an impressive array of international accolades, such as Best International Documentary at the Tempo Documentary Festival (2022) and the Cinema for Peace Award for Political Film of the Year (2022). The film was also nominated for the Documentary Film Award at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival (2021), the Grand Prix – International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Réel (2021), the Best Feature-Length Documentary at the Kraków Film Festival (2021), and was even longlisted for an Oscar (2022).

Paluyan’s path to creating this important film was not direct. He was born in Baranavichy, Belarus, and chose to study engineering and informatics at Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. After receiving his degree in 2012, he moved to Germany to study film and television directing at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Before Courage, he directed two other projects: a documentary titled Kraĭ zhanchyn zhanchyn / Country of Women (2017, Belarus/Germany) and the short fiction drama Vozera radastsi / Lake of Happiness (2019, Belarus/Germany/Spain). His second film premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, earned a nomination for the European Film Awards in 2020, and was longlisted for the Oscars.

In Courage, Paluyan documents the nationwide protests and the violent crackdown that followed the fraudulent August 2020 presidential election. The film frames these historical events through the stories of Maryna Yakubovich (Maryna Iakubovich), Pavel Haradnitski, and Dzianis Tarasenka, three members of the Belarus Free Theatre (Belaruski Svabodny Tėatr), known as BFT, an internationally renowned underground theatre group and a beacon of open expression in Belarusian society. Founded in 2005 by Natalia Kaliada (Natallia Kaliada), Nikolai Khalezin (Mikalai Khalezin), and Vladimir Shcherban (Uladzimir Shchėrbanʹ), the company was first raided by police in 2007; its persecution drew support from figures such as Václav Havel, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter. In the film, Yakubovich is a young mother and the leading actress of the BFT. Haradnitski acts in the BFT, while Tarasenka works as an auto-repair mechanic after the government banned him from acting three years earlier for his political views. The documentary contains three types of settings: public, domestic, and, importantly, theatrical rehearsals and performances. Placing performance at the centre of the documentary infuses the project with the intentionality and creativity inherent in theatre. It suggests that in 2020, everyday Belarusians were raising their voices like never before, stepping onto a metaphorical stage. It also suggests that Paluyan was aware of this ‘theatrical debut’ of the Belarusian people and the need to authentically chronicle it.

Courage sets itself apart from others within the cinema of resistance by focusing on its participants’ agency in the face of repression without romanticising their fear, pain, and bravery. If the theatre is the ultimate space for honest creative expression, then it is no mistake that Paluyan chose to capture this historical moment by accompanying actors alongside Belarusians from all walks of life as they transformed their streets into a world stage. Even though the regime ultimately survived, the film portrays Belarusians in a way and at a scale at which they had not been seen before – present, active, and vocal.

Paluyan avoids talking-head interviews entirely and rigorously applies immersive direct cinema techniques to transmit the pure experience of this watershed moment in his nation’s history. The stylistic decision to plunge the viewer into both the domestic and public experiences of 2020 carries profound cultural weight; historically, Belarusians have often been erased from their own history, folded into the tsarist Russian Empire, the USSR, or the post-Soviet Russian sphere of influence, and all too often are overlooked as a culture. With the rapid pace of modern news cycles and the shrinking collective attention span, Belarus rarely enjoys time in the international spotlight. In defiance of this, Courage maintains an unwavering gaze on the difficult and often heroic actions of everyday Belarusians. Paluyan does not put his nation’s trauma on display; he documents Belarusian political and artistic agency for a global audience, helping to remedy this painful invisibility.

Paluyan acknowledges this absence in the form of silence. As the protests erupt, the film depicts Dzianis Tarasenka performing Zona maŭchannia / The Zone of Silence (2015), a play by Belarus Free Theatre.¹ He and two other actors babble incoherently to each other like buffoons before looking up at words projected behind them, “72 per cent of Belarusians find it difficult to define the word ‘democracy’”. The babbling speaks to a painful theme in Belarusian history, its illegibility. Caught in the web of Russian influence, Belarusian culture is often indecipherable to outsiders as a distinct entity, resulting in its tragic invisibility. The projected statistic is drawn from a late-2000s Belarusian sociological poll and suggests that Belarusian citizens fail to grasp the primary political mechanism for national expression. They supposedly abdicate their own power of voice. The mise en abyme present in this scene works double-time; when the play quotes the statistic, and the film quotes the play, it effectively expresses both the inert status quo of grassroots Belarusian political power and their self-consciousness of this ‘inadequacy’ that the viewer is about to see evolve. This multilayered approach effectively establishes the state of Belarusian politics and culture with elegant brevity, allowing international viewers to appreciate the full significance of the subsequent scenes of protest, in which Belarusians break their silence and are at last witnessed on the international stage.

The film’s portrayal of these protests is remarkable both formally and as historical testimony. The documentary contains only authentic footage of actual events. These were the largest protests in the nation’s history, and everyone present, including the people operating the cameras, was in serious danger. Due to their attendance at the protests, they continue to be imperilled because the regime has since relentlessly pursued any and all individuals appearing in photographs or videos of the protests. The immediate danger is palpable in every frame, as is the bravery and fear of everyday people seen occupying public spaces and expressing a collective voice. In one scene, protesters raise their voices in defiance, at last breaking that aforementioned silence, even as riot police close in on them. The protesters stand steadfast, backed by the camera’s unflinching gaze. The shot is held with shaky hands for a nerve-racking length of time, always ensuring that protesters stay in focus. Paluyan maintains this immersive, observational mode throughout the film, and never muddies the experience with didactic narration or interviews. This ensures that the film does not tell the viewer how to feel but rather invites them into the phenomenology of political awakening and resistance.