Belarusian Films

This curated selection of contemporary Belarusian cinema offers a prismatic reflection of a society navigating displacement, existential uncertainty, and the collision of personal and collective memory. The films resist monolithic interpretations, instead embracing hybrid forms—surrealism, neo-noir, video art, poetic, documentary—to interrogate identity in flux. Pavel Stankus’ Forgetting juxtaposes the banality of daily life with the specter of impending conflict, while Arseniy Aleinik’s Comfortable Guy reimagines Cold War-era action tropes as a wry commentary on globalized absurdity. Lena Le’s Office transforms urban alienation into a meditative visual essay, its nocturnal emptiness echoing the dislocation in Korzan Andrew’s Kawalerka, where familial bonds strain under the weight of emigration.

Vova Veselik’s OshM weaponizes surrealism to expose bureaucracy’s Kafkaesque logic, blurring the line between observer and participant in a decaying system. Maksim Shved’s The Last Shift anchors its horror in documentary realism, framing a migrant worker’s New Year’s ordeal as a metaphor for perpetual crisis. Antos Sivyh’s Rare Species stands apart as a lyrical elegy, its fragmented imagery of bones and reefs evoking ecological and existential erosion.

Together, these works eschew didacticism, inviting viewers to dwell in ambiguity. Whether through the genre-play of comedy or the stillness of poetry, they map the fissures between individual agency and external forces—state, history, displacement—without reducing their subjects to mere symbols. Here, cinema becomes a space where the unspeakable is gestured toward, not explained, reflecting Belarus’s complex realities through a lens that is at once local and universally resonant.

FORGETTING

Pavel Stankus (2025, 9 min)

A universal story about a man living his best life on the eve of a new war.

COMFORTABLE GUY

Arseniy Aleinik (2024, 17 min)

Our film is a love letter to the old cozy action movies of the 80s and 90s. Flamethrowers, double agents, love, shurikens, and so on. It’s a neo-noir comedy about an agent who is infiltrated the Hong Kong mafia operating in the Czech Republic.

OFFICE

Lena Le (2024, 3 min)

Dedicated to the feeling that what the street once was for the artist is now in the office. Out of hatred for the circumstances and the beauty of the nocturnal emptiness.

KAWALERKA

Korzan Andrew (2025, 14 min)

Family. Emigration. Relationship crisis.

OshM

Vova Viaselik, Alieh Piekar (2025, 10 min)

A surreal and atmospheric journey into the absurdities of bureaucracy, inspired by urban legends of ball lightning. In a decaying world where logic crumbles, the line between observation and participation dissolves, turning routine documentation into something far more unsettling—where reality itself begins to distort.

THE LAST SHIFT

Maksim Shved, Melissa Shved (2023, 20 min)

The New Year’s Eve night shift at one of the Warsaw Hostels resulted in real nightmares for the receptionist girl from Belarus. She saved a guest from Ukraine’s life, which is only the beginning of the horror.

RARE SPECIES

Antos Sivyh (2024, 4 min)

“The ocean pulls back. Stones glisten, wet and heavy. A woman walks, picking up bones. Some are fish. Some are not. She presses them into her palm, feeling their weight.

A man dives deep. His hands trace coral, smooth and sharp. Shapes shift in the dark. Eyes blink from rock. He listens. The reef hums, restless.

On the shore, waves leave gifts—teeth, ribs, salt-white shells. The past rises. Creatures move, half-seen. A storm comes. Water swallows, then spits them out.

They are fewer now. The tide does not care.”

A SHADOW OF JOY

Zmitser Pylypiv (2025, 27 min)

The documentary tells the story of Artur, a Belarusian political prisoner who, after three years in prison, starts his life from scratch in Poland. Through his eyes, the viewer sees the difficulties of adaptation: language barrier, job search, social isolation, nostalgia for his homeland and attempts to keep hope alive. The movie balances personal drama, political context and the universal theme of survival in exile.

FORGETTING

COMFORTABLE GUY

OFFICE

KAWALERKA

OshM

THE LAST SHIFT

RARE SPECIES

A SHADOW OF JOY

All programmes

Animation

Anthology

Belarusian Films

Filmic Variety

Foreigners In Universe

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Horror

Human & Algorithms

Leviathan’s Dream That Was Forgotten in a Moment

Solo Soul Sauna

Stiching Lines

Walls and Sounds

11th edition | 2025 | Programmes

10th edition | 2024 | Programmes

9th edition | 2023 | Programmes

8th edition | 2022 | Programmes

7th edition | 2021 | Programmes

6th edition | 2020 | Programmes

5th edition | 2019 | Programmes

4th edition | 2018 | Programmes