Max Gavrilenko

For nearly 10 years, Belarus has had a Shelter — place for women victims of domestic violence. This is a big private house in Minsk. Many victims are brought here directly in their home clothes — the only thing they were able to escape from the aggressor. Belarus has not yet adopted a law on combating domestic violence. In this issue, you will find out the real stories of residents of the Shelter, what problems not only clients but also employees of the shelter have to face, and why it is so important to pass a law.

The company of young people falls into the forest outback on a mysterious lake and is faced with mystical horror. Based on the Belarusian legend that with the advent of night, everyone who died in the water turns into monsters that take the living with them.

Elena is a student in Minsk. She is having an intense but self-destructive love affair with Viktor. When Elena's father goes to prison she has to take charge of his business dealings to help him. She drives repeatedly into the restricted zone at Chernobyl, behind the wheel of a truck, in order to smuggle contaminated steel. The conflicts with Viktor escalate, and Elena is increasingly captivated by the zone's deceptive beauty...

Nastya, Sasha and Kristina are 16 years old. They study together at a school in a Belarusian town and live ordinary teenager lives, with the usual problems and dreams. Nastya wants a better life. Her dream is to study in Poland. Several times a week she goes to a private Polish language tutor. On these trips she is accompanied by her friend Sasha. The boy is constantly bullied by his schoolmates, who think he is gay. As for Kristina, she doesn’t plan on studying and is mostly interested in dating her new boyfriend. The school follows a severe law of rules and discipline that hasn’t changed much since Soviet times. The only person who stands out is a young English teacher. One day everything changes. A shocking event brings out fears, prejudice and hatred of those who are different.

The film tells a short story about two unsuccessful couriers who, it would seem, are given a simple task — to transport a small load. What could go wrong?

He came to her on the beach. She wanted to be alone, and left. He caught up with her and turned the rest of her days in a nightmare.

In a small, snow-covered town in Belarus, a former English teacher manages to scrape a living distributing leaflets to people’s letterboxes. In the evening, he joins his wife in their dingy apartment, and together they reminisce about their son, a student in Minsk they rarely see. Possibly their only excitement of the week is buying a lottery ticket, which, for a few seconds, gives them a chance to dream. Yuliya Shatun’s camera, at first oddly focused on the white expanses along every roadside, then begins to scrutinise the teacher in his comings and goings – a precise recording with, however, a hint of the moroseness of a terrain so rare in today’s cinema. The teacher has stoically adapted to a degenerate world and a life fuelled by stifled shame. An odour of neglect wafts between the apartment blocks, the uttered words and the background noise of the television. A certain irony floats in the air too, and it needs Yuliya Shatun’s patience to grasp and take responsibility for it.

Vlada Senkova’s third feature combines comedy and drama to portray three reckless young people willing to risk it all to make money.