T here are many symptoms of totalitarian sickness gripping Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus . You risk being arrested for wearing red and white together, the colours of the outlawed flag of the country’s opposition movement. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has been banned, which seems rather on the nose. But these are just some of the more farcical elements, the collateral comedy spinning from the deep repression, violence and psychological wounds charted in this sobering film that follows a trio of Belarusian activists, starting from the pandemic through to the invasion of Ukraine.

Director Juliane Tutein fashions a melancholic mood-piece which chronicles ineffectualness in the face of impregnable state machinery, and the meaning of resistance under such circumstances. Nina, who is 74, is

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