Belsat. Mission Freedom / Documentary by Mariusz Pilis |
Description: Fifteen years ago, the film director Mariusz Pilis, participated in the creation and launch of the Belarusian TV station Belsat. He returns to the station's newsroom after fifteen years. Two years after the presidential election, almost a year after Russian aggression against Ukraine started. The picture he sees shakes him to the core. Belsat, a television station that has always, since its foundation, been repressed by the Lukashenka regime, this time experienced an unbelievable scale of repression, which people call a "journalist-hunt". The director visits the station on the day when Daria Chultsova, a journalist who was convicted of covering street protests, is to appear at the TV station's Warsaw headquarters after passing a two-year prison sentence. Her and her colleague Katsiaryna Andreeva's case is familiar to European media and political circles. It was the first prison sentence for journalists in Belarus, following the rigged presidential election by the Lukashenka regime in 2020. Daria decided to talk to the director. This conversation, this meeting became the starting point for a journey into the depths of human fate, the fate of journalists working for the station. The director discovers that today such often tragic, dangerous stories to tell have almost all Belsat journalists. Through their stories, the director also portrays snippets from the recent history of Belarus itself, full of the cruelty of the authorities and citizens' hopes for the change of the regime. Everyone in this film has a story that, when told, sounds like a bad dream, like a nightmare. Despite the repression it has endured, Belsat is developing dynamically today, creating an area of free, reliable message of free people for free people. The film is a very personal message from the director, which is to show the need to support the people we see in their daily, dangerous work, in carrying out their mission, which is FREEDOM. Along with Belsat journalists, the film also features experts: Evhen Mahda, an expert on Belarusian politics from Ukraine, Marcin Przydacz, Poland's deputy foreign minister, and Daniel Fried of the US Atlantic Institute. Visit our website: http://belsat.eu/en/ Join us on social media: Facebook https://goo.gl/q15Htp Twitter https://goo.gl/P3H5Qp #Belsat #documentary #Belarus 
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