Belarus: Recalculating Route (2020) by Maksim Shved

Author

Katya Lopatko

Abstract

Maksim Shved’s documentary began with a simple premise: recording conversations between taxi drivers and passengers to capture the mood before the 2020 Belarusian presidential election. While filming the post-election protests, the director himself was detained, beaten and jailed alongside thousands of Belarusians. The resulting film captures a society on the brink of upheaval while also foreshadowing the stalled transformation and repression that would define Belarus after 2020.

Keywords

Maksim Shved; Aliaksandr Lukashenka; Belarus; documentary film; 2020 protests; cinéma-vérité; Belarusian cinema; political documentary; taxi cinema; pre-traumatic testimony.

Maksim Shved’s documentary [Belarus: Marshrut perabudavany] / Belarus: Marshrut perestroen / Belarus: Recalculating Route (2020, Belarus) began with a simple premise: recording conversations between taxi drivers and passengers to capture the mood before the 2020 Belarusian presidential election. Instead of wrapping on election night as planned, Shved kept his camera rolling on the streets of Minsk, where mass protests erupted following the falsified election results – he realised the real story was just getting started.

The title, Recalculating Route (a more accurate and sometimes used translation is Route Recalculated), employs a driving metaphor to convey the film’s transformation by the very events it set out to observe, along with the country’s uncertain future. Shved himself faced a ‘recalculated route’ after the election: while filming the protests, he was detained, beaten, and jailed alongside thousands of Belarusians for participating in ‘mass unauthorised events’. The resulting film captures a society on the brink of upheaval while also foreshadowing the stalled transformation and repression that would define Belarus after 2020.

Produced by the independent Russian-language network Nastoiashchee vremia / Current Time, part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the 54-minute documentary was initially conceived as a portrait of the pre-election mood in a country that has had only one president, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, since 1994. Elegant in the simplicity of its premise and techniques, Belarus: Recalculating Route captures a fleeting moment: a society suspended between two futures. Rather than reproducing the spectacular imagery that came to define international coverage of the 2020 protests, this documentary foregrounds the psychological forces behind the headlines – hope, fear, desire, frustration, indignation, and ambivalence – lending context, nuance, and specificity to the universal narrative of society revolting against a dictator. It documents not just the forces driving dissent but also the confusion, uncertainty, and fragmentation amid the mass movement.

The film opens by following its two protagonists, taxi drivers Pavel and Anna Mikhailovna (Hanna Mikhaĭlaŭna), as they begin their workdays in the Belarusian cities of Minsk and Baranavichy. Over mundane shots of public spaces, a radio broadcast reports on the upcoming presidential election. Throughout the film, radio broadcasts provide important context, including explanations of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia’s candidacy following the arrest of her husband, political blogger and activist Sergey Tikhanovsky (Siarheĭ Tsikhanoŭski). One early sequence captures the film’s central tension: OMON (AMAP) riot police jog through a park in black balaclavas, passing in front of a woman in a wedding dress, reminding viewers that ordinary, private celebrations in Belarus always occur in the shadow of state violence.

The film’s structure centres on conversations between the drivers and their passengers, people of all ages, social backgrounds, and political opinions. The drivers themselves are forthright about their political views: Pavel supports the opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaia, while Anna Mikhailovna is sceptical that regime change could bring tangible improvement and prefers the stability of Lukashenka’s rule. Exchanges move fluidly between the current political situation and everyday concerns, lending an aura of spontaneity and authenticity to the dialogue. Shot primarily from fixed dashboard-mounted angles, these encounters unfold in a restrained, observational style associated with the cinéma-vérité tradition, positioning the viewer as a detached witness.

Filming conversations inside taxis serves both formal and thematic functions. It allows the film to situate abstract political discussion within the physical landscapes of Belarus, maintaining spatial continuity while visually grounding each exchange. This enclosed, mobile setting also creates a suspended temporal zone: removed from everyday pressures, passengers engage in spontaneous, often unexpectedly candid conversations, reflecting the particular intimacy of chance encounters. The interplay of movement and stillness characteristic of a taxi ride mirrors the film’s historical moment; as the elections approach, Belarusian society builds momentum towards mass collective action, yet remains politically and structurally immobile.

The use of taxis was also a practical decision. As Shved explained in a 2023 profile for Voice of America, filming interviews in a semi-private space helped ensure the safety of participants and crew, a top priority of the documentary team. However, the film ventures into public space to film opposition meetings, including a rally in Minsk where Tsikhanouskaia leads hundreds of supporters, including Pavel, in a chant: “I can change everything!” This display of optimism is tempered by Anna Mikhailovna’s scepticism in other scenes, underscoring the political divisions between people of different generations, social groups, and worldviews. Viewed retrospectively, these scenes acquire the weight of pre-traumatic testimony, capturing a fleeting moment of hope amidst uncertainty before the mass arrests, exile, and consolidation of authoritarian control that reshaped Belarusian public life.

Election night arrives in the final ten minutes, and the title becomes diegetic when Pavel’s GPS tells him that his route has been recalculated: police have blocked the streets. The film veers away from the interview format to document the escalating tensions between the public and law enforcement as people gather outside polling stations to demand that results be announced, as required by law. Pavel follows the action into the centre of Minsk, where crowds march, streets are barricaded, and riot police throw tear gas at protesters.

The film ends at this climactic moment; credits begin rolling over shots of advancing riot police. The credits outline the effects of the ensuing protests on the documentary crew and subjects: Shved and director of photography Sergei Kovalev (Siarheĭ Kavalioŭ) were imprisoned; editor Il’ia Bozhko (Illia Bazhko) was caught in a police gas attack; multiple taxi passengers were detained, imprisoned, dismissed from their jobs, or forced to emigrate. The final screens reveal that Lukashenka was secretly inaugurated in September amid ongoing protests, with fourteen countries refusing to recognise him as the legitimate head of state. When the film was completed in October, the protests were still ongoing and would continue until 2021.

Released after five days in prison, Shved was shocked to find a large and growing protest movement; it seemed the regime’s days were numbered. Years later, he recalls how euphoria turned gradually to disillusionment as Lukashenka’s government doubled down on repression, protests waned, and international attention shifted elsewhere. Memories of this period became “traumatic” as a seemingly invincible movement was not just quelled but forgotten (Zamirovskaya 2023).

At the same time, the film represents one instance of these traumatic but vital memories kept alive. Improbably, Shved’s footage of the protests survived his imprisonment and made it into the film's final scenes, and appeared in a short documentary released by The Guardian in October 2020 (Poulton and Gormley 2020). The completed film screened at the Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema in 2022, and subsequent screenings at cultural institutions across Europe and the United States, often accompanied by discussions with the director, situate the film within a transnational network of independent and diasporic exhibition. As of April 2026, it is available on YouTube with English subtitles on the channel Nastoiashchee vremia. Dok / Current Time Doc.

Shved himself left Belarus in 2022, facing the threat of persecution as a filmmaker, journalist, and ex-prisoner (Zamirovskaya 2023). He sought asylum in Bulgaria and is currently based in Warsaw, Poland, where he continues working on projects about memory, personal expression, and state repression in Belarus and Eastern Europe. Shved’s first documentary, Chystae mastatstva / Czysta Sztuka / Pure Art (2019, Belarus/Poland), follows the painter Zakhar Kudin (Zakhar Kudzin) as he transfers onto canvas the coloured rectangles with which municipal workers paint over graffiti in Minsk, turning state erasure into a meditation on individual expression and control of public space. In exile, he has continued developing similar themes with projects like Flow, a documentary film about a Belarusian TV cameraman who tries to make a film about the 2020 protests (Shved is a producer on the project); [Vykhavanne Artsioma] / Vospitanie Artema / Artem’s Upbringing, a documentary project started by the late Liubov Zemtsova (Liuboŭ Ziamtsova), a filmmaker from the [Neviadomaia Belarus’] / Neizvestnaia Belarus’ / Unknown Belarus documentary project by the Current Time channel about the struggles of a father and his adopted son in Belarus; and Fatohraf z ploshchy peramen / Photographer from the Square of Changes, which follows Belarusian photographer Jauhien Atciecki (Iaŭhen Attsetski) who was forced to flee from government persecution to Ukraine, only to find himself in the midst of further violence.

In 2024, Shved conceptualised and produced the short documentary series Artefacts. The Museum of Free Belarus about legendary Belarusian protesters and their belongings, which were exhibited at the Museum of Free Belarus in Warsaw. Currently, he is completing and screening previews of a full-length documentary, Ėfekt Dzhoni Kosmika / The Johnny Cosmic Effect, about how one Belarusian photographer unwittingly created a strong, supportive community by sharing his photos with the subjects (Reform News 2026). The producers are currently searching for funding to complete the film. These projects retain their focus on multifaceted personal stories amid political conflict while situating Belarus within broader networks of regional conflict by connecting the 2020 protests to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Read in light of subsequent events, Belarus: Recalculating Route extends the logic of the taxi-bound encounters: just as participants speak within a suspended space of movement in which arrival is deferred and never shown within the narrative, the film captures a political moment that was suppressed before it could achieve its aims. The observational mode preserves disparate voices and perspectives, many of whose speakers would soon be silenced, imprisoned, or forced into exile. While international media cycles move on to the next crisis, this film keeps the historic moment alive in its richness, immediacy, specificity, and complexity, resisting the narrative closure that Lukashenka’s regime wants to impose, and instead insisting – as Shved once put it – that the real story is just getting started.

Katya Lopatko
University of California, Santa Barbara
lopatko@ucsb.edu

Bio

Katya Lopatko is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature completing a dissertation on aesthetic and political exchanges between filmmakers from the socialist bloc and the Third World at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s. Her research interests include postwar new cinemas, socialist internationalism, tricontinental cinema, and feminist and queer theories. Her article, “Kolia’s Queer Dérive: Subverting the Soviet State in Georgii Daneliia’s I Walk Around Moscow (1964)”, was recently published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Bibliography

Poulton, Lindsay, and Jess Gormley. 2020. “Belarus: Filmmakers Capture Personal Stories from a Country in Turmoil.” The Guardian. October 5. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/05/belarus-filmmakers-capture-personal-stories-from-a-country-in-turmoil.

Reform News. 2026. “Belarusian Documentary Filmmaker Maksim Shved Planned to Present a Project About Johnny Cosmic in Montenegro. Here Is What the Film Is About.” Reform News. May 16. https://reform.news/en/belarusian-documentary-filmmaker-maksim-shved-planned-to-present-a-project-about-johnny-cosmic-in-montenegro-here-is-what-the-film-is-about.

Zamirovskaya, Tatiana. 2023. “Belorusskii dokumentalist Maksim Shved: ‘Ia ne dumal, chto budet tak strashno’” [Belarusian Documentary Filmmaker Maksim Shved: ‘I Didn't Think It Would Be So Scary’]. Golos Ameriki [Voice of America]. August 10. https://www.golosameriki.com/a/maksim-shved-interview/7218196.html.

Filmography

Shved, Maksim. 2019. Chystae mastatstva / Czysta Sztuka / Pure Art. Square Film Studio, Volia Films. Belarus, Poland.

Shved, Maksim. 2020. [Belarus: Marshrut perabudavany] / Belarus: Marshrut perestroen / Belarus: Recalculating Route. Current Time TV (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty). Belarus.

Shved, Maksim. 2024. Artėfakty. Muzeĭ Volʹnaĭ Belarusi / Artefacts. The Museum of Free Belarus. Reform.news. Poland.

Suggested Citation

Lopatko, Katya. 2026. Film Review: “Belarus: Recalculating Route (2020) by Maksim Shved”. Belarusian Cinema and the Protests of 2020: Cinema in Exile (ed. Volha Isakava and Sasha Razor). Special issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 22. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2026.00022.428.

URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/

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