Writer and Director: Mara Tamkovich
The first 10 minutes of this film, set in Belarus, promise a white-knuckle ride. Journalist Lena and her camerawoman are filming a protest in Minsk from an apartment balcony that overlooks The Square of Changes. Their footage of the demonstration is being watched live by hundreds of thousands of people. The riot police turn up, but the protestors refuse to move. However, the police, knowing that the incident is being broadcast, are determined to find the apartment block being used for the filming. They send up a drone.
Based on the experience of journalist Katsyaryna Andreeva, Under the Grey Sky uses archive footage of the Belarusian protests after the rigged elections of 2020. Many protestors were killed, including Raman Bandarenka, whose death by police hands led to the protest that Lena is recording. Later on in the film, we see presumably real footage of his violent arrest in the square.
After Lena is arrested (like Andreeva in real life), the film takes on a more meditative mood, with the rest of its short running time concerned with trying to get her out of prison. For Lena’s husband, Ilya this proves to be a Sisyphean struggle. Under surveillance himself, Ilya refuses to leave the country, staying instead to fight for justice for his wife.
While he hides in a safe house, his flat is ransacked by the police. Later, the lawyer he has hired to petition for his wife’s release leaves him high and dry, fearing for her own safety. There are many shots of Ilya looking pensively into space. Meanwhile, Lena is moved from prison to prison as her jail sentence looks likely to increase.
As Lena and Ilya, Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich and Valentin Novopolskij put in committed performances, each revealing a different type of resistance to the regime. Lena is stubbornly steadfast while Ilya is more pragmatic, seemingly willing to put their lives before the liberation of the Belarusian people. But he won’t leave the country when his wife remains imprisoned.
At the time of writing, Andreeva is still in prison serving ten years for treason, a sentence that is disputed by Amnesty International. Mara Tamkovich’s impressive debut gives colour to the people we’ve only read about online. Her film is a gripping act of protest in itself.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Gripping
