Letters (working title)

Logline

LETTERS is a hybrid documentary portraying contemporary Belarus through the individuals who have endured imprisonment, repression, and exile — voices from a silenced country, suffocated by the regime.

Synopsis

LETTERS is a hybrid documentary portraying contemporary Belarus through the individuals who have endured imprisonment, repression, and exile — voices from a silenced country, suffocated by the regime.

Each chapter reveals a distinct experience of repression. A father hides from surveillance cameras in public spaces to avoid recognition and arrest, refusing to leave Belarus so as not to lose his bond with his daughter. Tatsiana, imprisoned in 2021, later flees to Ukraine to join her deported family and establishes a rehabilitation center near Kyiv for foreign soldiers, living under the constant awareness of war, accompanied by her close companion, the large dog Kailas. Kasia, a young student sentenced for participating in protests, endures imprisonment through drawing; art becomes her way to withstand confinement and preserve a sense of self. A former criminal investigator leaves the system, flees Belarus, and in exile in Poland finds himself repeatedly interrogated and confronts a growing sense of deadlock and powerlessness. The final chapter follows a political prisoner whose letters, filled with love and conviction, become his final testimony.

Combining observational footage, archival and found materials, testimonies, and animation based on drawings created in confinement, LETTERS transforms private correspondence into a cinematic space of intimacy, dignity, and reflection, raising questions about sacrifice, solidarity, and the human cost of resistance in a silenced society.