The Okrestin Sisters 2020

Directed by Mikalai Kuprych

The Okrestin Sisters is a Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) and Creatives Politics Hub production, shot and directed by a film-maker and BFT ensemble member, Kolya Kuprich. This short captures the first moments upon the release and the immediate witness accounts of three BFT members who were arrested in Minks on August 9th 2020, following the Presidential Election. BFT's General Managers, Nadia Brodskaya and Svetlana Sugako, along with the BFT actor Dasha Andreyanova were rounded up and detained while peacefully waiting for the results of the election at a local polling station. What followed their detention, was a surreal cascade of a Kafkaesque, bureaucratic judiciary system met by brutal, Gestapo-type assault on innocent citizens of Belarus. All happening away from the cameras, behind closed doors, inside authoritarian prisons. The creators of the film want the shed light on what took place in Belarusian prisons during the detentions of August 9-14.