Aleh Dashkevich’s film at festival in Amsterdam (Video)

Belarusian film director Aleh Dashkevich presented Journalists film at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.

The movie tells about problems of freedom of speech in Belarus, about life and work of independent Belarusian journalists in our country. The Amnesty International included Journalists into the shortlist of its annual human rights film festival.

According to Aleh Dashkevich, the Amsterdam festival is of special importance to documentary films in general, as it is the biggest and the greatest festival in Europe.

“Many of my colleagues and journalists, covering documentary cinema, compare this festival to Cannes Festival for feature films. Besides me, Belarus is represented by Uladzimir Kolas and his Ada Gallery. Kolas’s film is presented by Polish Belsat TV channel, broadcasting for Belarus,” the film director noted in his interview to the Charter’97 press center.

Aleh Dashkevich says he chose freedom of speech as theme of his film because it is the most acute one for Belarus, and profession of journalist is the most important for the Belarusian society today.

“It is acute for us. It is journalists, who fight for freedom more that other people. I didn’t want to show it like a poster – we are working under pressing, I wanted to show a real life: everyone has his or her family, job. In Amsterdam, audience, organisers, colleagues agreed that the film is very emotional. They said film’s atmosphere doesn’t leave a viewer untouched because it shows the life,” Aleh Dashkevich admitted.

According to the film director, the festival impressed him with its scope and quality of documentary films. Valerya Krasouskaya, daughter businessman and public figure Anatol Krasouski, disappeared in 1999 together with first vice speaker of the Supreme Council of Belarus Viktar Hanchar, helped Aleh Dashkevich to translate the film.

“I was especially impressed with organization of the festival. I have never seen so many films directors and films presented. By the way, as I am not so good at English, Valerya Krasouskaya, daughter of Anatol Krasouski, disappeared with Viktar Hanchar, helped me with the film translation. In my view, it is not a coincidence, because I showed a story of journalist and camera-man Zmitser Zavadski, who disappeared in 2000. I tried to show the epoch that can be seen today, too, “Aleh Dashkevich says.