17 October 2021
Andrei Kutilo's film "When the Flowers Are Not Silent" about the protests in Belarus was recognized as the best documentary film at the Warsaw Film Festival. This is a chronicle of the summer-autumn of 2020, shown through the personal stories of families affected by repression and violence. The most valuable thing in winning, according to the director of the film, is that it will draw additional attention to the film, and hence to the topic of the Belarusian protests:
“I am glad that thanks to the award, the film will be shown somewhere else and thus the attention to the subject will be preserved .. Which means, the agenda will be held at other festival venues.”
„Psychologically, it was almost the most difficult project in my life. It happened when driving back from the hospital, where I saw the victims and talked to them, I simply cannot continue to drive the car — I have to stop to calm down,” the documentary filmmaker said. „You can feel it all down in here. You take all this pain as your own. I could somehow hold on during the editing, but after that, when it was necessary to control the color, I could no longer watch my film. In general, one can watch such things once, maximum - twice. A year has passed, and I still cannot react to it calmly. I am exhausted working on the topic, I want to take a break. But how to do it, when every day you think about the fate of Belarusians, about repressions, THAT EVERYTHING IS STILL GOING ON ... "
