User reviews

Being shown this movie in Canada while an east-west crisis was/is going on in Ukraine was a bit problematic, especially after noticing the HBO logo on the intro of the documentary. I think this movie is really interesting, to document one of the lesser known country in Europe. Many seemed chocked to find out that there was still a dictatorship in europe, with the same ruler going back as far as 1994. The documentary is about this, and the aftermath of the uprising that went on in december 2010, when the his re-election at 79% didn't fooled anyone (which is the same for bouteflika last week in Algeria, but he has our full support so there won't be as much coverage). All of the electoral opponents to Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator, got arrested for incitation to riot. That's the backdrop. The movie is actually focusing on an underground theatre, the Belarus Free Theâtre, who had to escape belarus, through it's only open border with russia in order to avoid prosecution for their support of one of the other candidate, and their resistance against state pressure and censorship. While touring as a theatre in western europe and north america, they made the situation in belarus known to the rest of the world. Yet, I still think this movie is a bit problematic, and all my criticism could be examplified by the sequence of the british lady at the sidewalk café, saying that there is not like here and that political opponents are put in prison, that there is no free speech, etc. It is very much true, and the situation in belarus is terrible and should change for the best (the film worked on me), but we shouldn't consider our situation to be much better, and actually consider the situations of the last two persons who smuggled informations out of their western country to make it known to the world... good documentary about the situation in belarus there in the recent years though.