{"id":36456,"date":"2026-08-10T12:53:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36456"},"modified":"2026-08-10T12:53:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:53:37","slug":"venice-title-letters-from-the-silenced-country-boarded-by-filmotor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=36456","title":{"rendered":"Venice Title &#8216;Letters From the Silenced Country&#8217; Boarded by Filmotor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/filmotor\/\" id=\"auto-tag_filmotor\" data-tag=\"filmotor\">Filmotor<\/a> has picked up world sales rights for \u201cLetters From the Silenced Country\u201d by Belarusian writer-director <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/andrei-kutsila\/\" id=\"auto-tag_andrei-kutsila\" data-tag=\"andrei-kutsila\">Andrei Kutsila<\/a>, which has its world premiere at the <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/venice-film-festival\/\" id=\"auto-tag_venice-film-festival\" data-tag=\"venice-film-festival\">Venice Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe partly animated documentary, screening in the Venice Open \u2013 Out of Competition section, is a portrait of contemporary Belarus told through stories of individuals who have endured imprisonment, repression and exile \u2013 voices silenced by an autocratic regime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tFollowing Belarus\u2019 peaceful protests in 2020, the regime\u2019s violent crackdown left many dead, injured, imprisoned or forced into exile. The war in Ukraine triggered anti-war resistance and even harsher repression, making public dissent nearly impossible. Against this backdrop, letters became one of the few remaining connections between political prisoners and the outside world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe film \u201ctransforms private stories into a cinematic space of dignity, intimacy and reflection, revealing the human cost of resistance and exploring themes of sacrifice, solidarity, and survival in a country where dissenting voices have been silenced,\u201d according to a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tHere\u2019s the synopsis: When the streets are quiet and people are afraid to even discuss politics in Belarus, letters can give us an insight into the feelings of pain, despair, love and hope.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tEach story reveals a different facet of repression. A father lives in hiding, evading surveillance to avoid arrest and separation from his daughter. A former criminal investigator breaks with the system, flees Belarus, and, in exile in Poland, faces repeated interrogations and an increasing sense of isolation and powerlessness. Kasia, a young student imprisoned for her participation in protests, turns to drawing as a means of survival \u2013 preserving her identity and expressing what cannot be spoken openly. Fifty-year-old Vitold\u2019s story unfolds through photographs sent by a friend from home: carefully chosen fragments of a life beyond prison walls that offer moments of freedom while revealing both what is visible and what remains hidden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tKutsila is a Belarusian documentary filmmaker based in Poland. His documentaries have been screened and awarded at major international festivals, including IDFA, DOK Leipzig, Hot Docs and the Krakow Film Festival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tHis documentary \u201cSumma\u201d (2018) won the IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary, followed by the Silver Hobby-Horse for Best Documentary in the National Competition at the Krakow Film Festival in 2019. \u201cWhen Flowers Are Not Silent\u201d (2021) received the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Warsaw Film Festival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tForced to leave Belarus after the 2020 protests, Kutsila settled in Poland, where he continued his artistic development through an internship at the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Film School. Over the past five years, his work has focused primarily on documenting the experiences of Belarusians living under repression and in exile.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tMichaela \u010cajkov\u00e1, founder and sales and festivals executive at Filmotor, said, \u201cUsing an innovative blend of animation, archive and personal correspondence, Kutsila crafts an essential, unforgettable portrait of human dignity against autocratic repression.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tProducer Miros\u0142aw Dembi\u0144ski, president at DocEdu Foundation, said, \u201cTwenty years ago, I directed the film \u2018Lesson of Belarusian,\u2019 which chronicled the repression of the Lukashenko regime: street brutality by the police, mass arrests and long sentences. Since then, it\u2019s been the same: the same batons, the same prisons, the same Lukashenko. Since 2020, it\u2019s been even worse, because the scale of repression has become more widespread. Andrei Kutsila took on the challenge of making a documentary about political prisoners in Belarus. It\u2019s also an artistic challenge: how to make a film about someone who can\u2019t be filmed. I think he\u2019s found a way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cLetters From the Silenced Country\u201d is produced by DocEdu Foundation in Poland in co-production with Moonmakers in Lithuania, and Inselfilm Produktion in Germany. It was supported by the Polish Film Institute, the Lithuanian Film Center and Connected Foundation, and was co-produced by TVP, EC1 \u2013 Lodz City of Culture and ZDF, in collaboration with ARTE and Deutsche Welle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe project participated in the following development programs: Young Europe, B2B, Ex Oriente, East Doc, Doc Leipzig Co-Pro Market, Movies That Metter, MDAG Industry and Watch Docs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filmotor has picked up world sales rights for \u201cLetters From the Silenced Country\u201d by Belarusian writer-director Andrei Kutsila, which has its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The partly animated documentary, screening in the Venice Open \u2013 Out of Competition section, is a portrait of contemporary Belarus told through stories of individuals who have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Letters-From-the-Silenced-Country.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}