Voice

An 18-year-old woman is on the run from the repressions in Belarus. She took part in the demonstrations against falsified elections in August 2020 and protested the inauguration of the former president. She went through arrests and detentions.

At her mother’s insistence, she flees to Russia. In Saint Petersburg, she meets the Belarusian film student Nadya Zaytseva, to whom she tells her story. The young woman, who remains nameless and faceless, offers incisive observations and analyses as she openly expresses her feelings about the violent events and their aftermath. The documentary filmmaker closely follows her exile—in her room, strolling through the city, or on the beach—and allows her to tell her story in an uninterrupted flow.

This unobtrusive approach creates a compelling picture of what a dictatorship does to the lives of its rebellious citizens, and how aggressive, absurd, and threatening it can be. The final images in particular are extremely disconcerting.