“It is becoming very quiet in Belarus; it is drowning beneath the ice,” says a man in *Letters from the Silenced Country*. Under the regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus has been marked by daily repression for thirty years.
Through footage of suppressed protests, excerpts from letters written by political prisoners to their loved ones, surveillance camera recordings, and animations based on drawings made in prison, this film sheds light on the experiences of individuals who have endured repression firsthand.
Many political prisoners were handed long prison sentences after demonstrating against the rigged presidential election in 2020. In addition to their accounts, we hear from a man who has gone into hiding for fear of arrest, as well as a police investigator who fled to Poland, no longer willing to be part of the regime. Together, these testimonies paint a poignant picture of the price paid by those who resist oppression—and who refuse to stop envisioning a life in freedom.
