Courage (2021) by Aliaksei Paluyan:

Belarusians Take the Stage

Author

Oliver Okun

Abstract

[Smelastsʹ] / Courage (Aliaksei Paluyan [Aliakseĭ Paluian], 2021) is one of the first documentaries about the Belarusian uprising in 2020. Privileging observational mode and real footage of the protests, the film follows members of the dissident underground Belarus Free Theatre as they join the protest movement. Oliver Okun’s review explores how the film weaves together individual lives and choices of the protagonists, their work in political theatre, and the transformative history of 2020.

Keywords

Aliaksei Paluyan (Aliakseĭ Paluian); Maryna Yakubovich (Maryna Iakubovich); Pavel Haradnitski; Dzianis Tarasenka; Belarus; Belarus Free Theatre; post-Soviet; revolution; protest; authoritarianism; documentary film; Eastern European politics; Courage.

[Smelastsʹ] / Courage (Aliaksei Paluyan [Aliakseĭ Paluian], 2021, Germany) is the most significant cinematic record to date of Belarus’s 21st-century national awakening. Filmed at great peril to the crew during the 2020 protests, Courage is director Aliaksei Paluyan’s first full-length documentary film. It was produced in Germany by Living Pictures Production and premiered at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale Special section. It has since garnered an impressive array of international accolades, such as Best International Documentary at the Tempo Documentary Festival (2022) and the Cinema for Peace Award for Political Film of the Year (2022). The film was also nominated for the Documentary Film Award at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival (2021), the Grand Prix – International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Réel (2021), the Best Feature-Length Documentary at the Kraków Film Festival (2021), and was even longlisted for an Oscar (2022). Paluyan’s path to creating this important film was not direct. He was born in Baranavichy, Belarus, and chose to study engineering and informatics at Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. After receiving his degree in 2012, he moved to Germany to study film and television directing at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Before Courage, he directed two other projects: a documentary titled Kraĭ zhanchyn zhanchyn / Country of Women (2017, Belarus/Germany) and the short fiction drama Vozera radastsi / Lake of Happiness (2019, Belarus/Germany/Spain). His second film premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, earned a nomination for the European Film Awards in 2020, and was longlisted for the Oscars.

In Courage, Paluyan documents the nationwide protests and the violent crackdown that followed the fraudulent August 2020 presidential election. The film frames these historical events through the stories of Maryna Yakubovich (Maryna Iakubovich), Pavel Haradnitski, and Dzianis Tarasenka, three members of the Belarus Free Theatre (Belaruski Svabodny Tėatr), known as BFT, an internationally renowned underground theatre group and a beacon of open expression in Belarusian society. Founded in 2005 by Natalia Kaliada (Natallia Kaliada), Nikolai Khalezin (Mikalai Khalezin), and Vladimir Shcherban (Uladzimir Shchėrbanʹ), the company was first raided by police in 2007; its persecution drew support from figures such as Václav Havel, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter. In the film, Yakubovich is a young mother and the leading actress of the BFT. Haradnitski acts in the BFT, while Tarasenka works as an auto-repair mechanic after the government banned him from acting three years earlier for his political views. The documentary contains three types of settings: public, domestic, and, importantly, theatrical rehearsals and performances. Placing performance at the centre of the documentary infuses the project with the intentionality and creativity inherent in theatre. It suggests that in 2020, everyday Belarusians were raising their voices like never before, stepping onto a metaphorical stage. It also suggests that Paluyan was aware of this ‘theatrical debut’ of the Belarusian people and the need to authentically chronicle it.

Courage sets itself apart from others within the cinema of resistance by focusing on its participants’ agency in the face of repression without romanticising their fear, pain, and bravery. If the theatre is the ultimate space for honest creative expression, then it is no mistake that Paluyan chose to capture this historical moment by accompanying actors alongside Belarusians from all walks of life as they transformed their streets into a world stage. Even though the regime ultimately survived, the film portrays Belarusians in a way and at a scale at which they had not been seen before – present, active, and vocal.

Paluyan avoids talking-head interviews entirely and rigorously applies immersive direct cinema techniques to transmit the pure experience of this watershed moment in his nation’s history. The stylistic decision to plunge the viewer into both the domestic and public experiences of 2020 carries profound cultural weight; historically, Belarusians have often been erased from their own history, folded into the tsarist Russian Empire, the USSR, or the post-Soviet Russian sphere of influence, and all too often are overlooked as a culture. With the rapid pace of modern news cycles and the shrinking collective attention span, Belarus rarely enjoys time in the international spotlight. In defiance of this, Courage maintains an unwavering gaze on the difficult and often heroic actions of everyday Belarusians. Paluyan does not put his nation’s trauma on display; he documents Belarusian political and artistic agency for a global audience, helping to remedy this painful invisibility.

Paluyan acknowledges this absence in the form of silence. As the protests erupt, the film depicts Dzianis Tarasenka performing Zona maŭchannia / The Zone of Silence (2015), a play by Belarus Free Theatre.¹ He and two other actors babble incoherently to each other like buffoons before looking up at words projected behind them, “72 per cent of Belarusians find it difficult to define the word ‘democracy’”. The babbling speaks to a painful theme in Belarusian history, its illegibility. Caught in the web of Russian influence, Belarusian culture is often indecipherable to outsiders as a distinct entity, resulting in its tragic invisibility. The projected statistic is drawn from a late-2000s Belarusian sociological poll and suggests that Belarusian citizens fail to grasp the primary political mechanism for national expression. They supposedly abdicate their own power of voice. The mise en abyme present in this scene works double-time; when the play quotes the statistic, and the film quotes the play, it effectively expresses both the inert status quo of grassroots Belarusian political power and their self-consciousness of this ‘inadequacy’ that the viewer is about to see evolve. This multilayered approach effectively establishes the state of Belarusian politics and culture with elegant brevity, allowing international viewers to appreciate the full significance of the subsequent scenes of protest, in which Belarusians break their silence and are at last witnessed on the international stage.

The film’s portrayal of these protests is remarkable both formally and as historical testimony. The documentary contains only authentic footage of actual events. These were the largest protests in the nation’s history, and everyone present, including the people operating the cameras, was in serious danger. Due to their attendance at the protests, they continue to be imperilled because the regime has since relentlessly pursued any and all individuals appearing in photographs or videos of the protests. The immediate danger is palpable in every frame, as is the bravery and fear of everyday people seen occupying public spaces and expressing a collective voice. In one scene, protesters raise their voices in defiance, at last breaking that aforementioned silence, even as riot police close in on them. The protesters stand steadfast, backed by the camera’s unflinching gaze. The shot is held with shaky hands for a nerve-racking length of time, always ensuring that protesters stay in focus. Paluyan maintains this immersive, observational mode throughout the film, and never muddies the experience with didactic narration or interviews. This ensures that the film does not tell the viewer how to feel but rather invites them into the phenomenology of political awakening and resistance.

The following morning brings news of death. Several protesters are killed by the regime's masked riot police, known by the Russian abbreviation OMON (Belarusian: AMAP). Haradnitski joins tens of thousands of mourners in the streets. They cry and lay flowers at a makeshift memorial, responding to violence by gathering and collectively expressing themselves. Lamentation fills the soundscape at a time when words would only embarrass tragedy. The scene is painful, but unapologetic in its authenticity. In an interview with the East European Film Bulletin Paluyan says that “the role of the artist is to be honest” with oneself and the audience (de Castro 2021). This honesty pervades every formal aspect of the film, from the camera’s unwillingness to look away to the uninterrupted, unmediated sounds of the crowds navigating these historic events. The film weaves together a powerful soundscape that oscillates between loud scenes of civil unrest and hushed discussion in domestic spaces.

In one such domestic scene, tight shots capture Maryna Yakubovich standing in her kitchen with her infant child and partner. They assess their options, thinking of what is best for their child’s future – to go out on the streets and possibly deprive their child of a mother or a father, or to stay at home and risk losing this chance to take action. The process of seizing one’s agency is excruciating in Courage, and Paluyan does not spare the viewer any of this pain. Silence in the background and long close-ups washed in the austere light of an overcast Minsk morning convey the cognitive weight of the predicament in which so many Belarusians found themselves in 2020. They conclude that by staying home, they are putting the problem on their child’s shoulders.

After painful deliberation, the film’s protagonists all take to the streets. The three artists, alongside their friends and neighbours, choose expression, presence, and agency over silence, absence and passivity. Despite their courage, the Lukashenka regime brutally crushed the protests and retained control over the country. Following Courage, Paluyan – like many of the film’s participants – was placed on the regime’s blacklist and can no longer safely return to Belarus. The film reflects this disappointment in its final scene with a restaged BFT performance by Yakubovich and Haradnitski of Adkryĭ kakhanne / Discover Love (2020).² The play tells the story of businessman Anatoly Krasovsky (Anatol’ Krasoŭski) and his wife Irina Krasovskaya (Iryna Krasoŭskaia), a couple whose profound love was destroyed after Anatoly’s disappearance in 1999, after supporting Belarus’s opposition. The inclusion of this excerpt emphasises the continuity of the struggle and suggests that the documentary is not a victory parade, but rather a living entity doing important work in an ongoing movement. Courage was the first film about the 2020 Belarusian protests to premiere in the Berlinale Special programme, and the first to reach the Academy Awards’ documentary feature longlist. No other film brought the Belarusian political struggle to such a large international audience. The film’s skill and honesty not only set it apart from its peers but also facilitated its more global recognition. From Hollywood to Berlin and beyond, Courage continues to function as a significant act of cultural diplomacy and grassroots activism in a pitched battle for freedom.

Oliver Okun
University of Chicago
ookun@uchicago.edu

Bio

Oliver Okun is a PhD Candidate at the University of Chicago in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Okun works on 20th- and 21st-century Belarusian and Eastern European borderland culture and intellectual history. He is currently writing a dissertation on the Eastern European concept of localness called tutėishastsʹ (too-tay-shasts, ‘here-ness’), and the role it plays in the fight against authoritarianism.

Filmography:

Paluyan, Aliaksei. 2017. Kraĭ zhanchyn zhanchyn / Country of Women. NUR Film Group Production.

Paluyan, Aliaksei. 2019. Vozera radastsi / Lake of Happiness. Living Pictures Production.

Paluyan, Aliaksei. 2021. [Smelastsʹ] / Courage. Living Pictures Production.

Bibliography

de Castro, Colette. 2021. “Aliaksei Paluyan on Courage”. East European Film Bulletin 116. https://eefb.org/country/belarus/aliaksei-paluyan-on-courage/.

Suggested Citation

Okun, Oliver. 2026. “Courage (2021) by Aliaksei Paluyan: Belarusians Take the Stage”. 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.2026.00022.430.

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

Copyright: The text of this article has been published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This licence does not apply to the media referenced in the article, which are subject to the individual rights owner's terms