Spring. A documentary about Ales Bialiatski

A film director Volga Shved shot a documentary about the Belarusian political prisoner.

It was premiered at the Belsat TV channel.

The film tells about the fate and work of the chairman of the human rights center Viasna Ales Bialiatski and also all the people, whom the organization helped to stand for their rights.

“The history of modern Belarus is the history of repressions. Every crucial event – elections, price increase, change of legislation – ends with repressions. Whereas the organization of assistance to the repressed is in a direct confrontation with the repressive agencies. Thus, Ales Bialiatski became a personal enemy of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in a certain sense. Because you stop being afraid whether to say what you think, to go to a protest demonstration, when there is someone who can help you in case of problems”, - the film’s director Volga Shved says.

Viasna’96, the organization for helping the repressed, was founded in 1996, two years after Lukashenka came to power.

The central person of the film is Ales Bialiatski. He is there on the archive pictures and chronicle shootings, but Ales does not speak in the film himself except for the last word in court. But he does appeal to us – through the words of his wife, who tells, why Ales chose the Belarusian way of living, why took upon protecting people from post-communist authorities, how he step by step got used to the thought that he will become a victim of repression himself, how he lived realizing the inevitability of that. What price did he have to pay daily and what does it mean to be near such a person?