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.

Компания молодых людей попадает в лесную глубинку на тайное озеро и сталкивается там с мистическим ужасом, который раз в году рождается в Купальскую ночь.

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...

16-летние Настя, Саша и Кристина, учатся вместе в десятом классе и живут обыкновенной жизнью подростков: уроки, репетиторы, походы в кино, вечеринки. В школе царит суровая дисциплина и трудно быть не таким, как все. Но однажды этот маленький мир потрясет новость, из-за которой все страхи и предрассудки вылезут наружу.

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.