Pod szarym niebem / Under The Grey Sky – Film und Gespräch mit der Regisseurin Mara Tamkovich

Feature film, R/B: Mara Tamkovich, PL 2024, 82 min, OmeU, followed by conversation in 🇬🇧 English

Moderation: Bartek Tesarz (Polish Institute Berlin)

FREE ENTRY!

“Under The Gray Sky / Pod szarym niebem” celebrated its premiere in the competition of Tribeca Film Festival in New York and has since been selected for several dozen festivals in Poland and worldwide (including filmPOLSKA 2025 in Berlin). At the Gdynia Feature Film Festival, the most important film event in Poland, Mara Tamkovich received the award for best debut. The highlight of the film's festival journey is its nomination this year for the European Film Prize in the “Best Newcomer Film” category.

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Protests are breaking out after the dictatorial Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka falsified elections again. Although Lena is followed at every turn by the secret service, the young, independent journalist secretly films demonstrations and their bloody suppression. Shortly afterwards she herself is arrested and initially disappears without a trace.

Her husband, the opposition intellectual Ilya, has to watch, largely powerless, as his wife is denied a fair trial. Rather, Lena is charged with treason and transferred to a prison camp. Even an experienced lawyer can't help her. Lena urges her husband to go abroad, but he has doubts - can he possibly fight more successfully for her and their common cause if he stays in Belarus?

The Minsk-born Polish-Belarusian director Mara Tamkovich tells the story of her short film “Na żywo / Live” (2022) in her political drama. She processes the true story of the Belarusian journalist Kazjaryna Bachwalawa and uses her case to show how much politics invades private life in a dictatorship and forces people to make decisions in which there is neither right nor wrong. [Rainer Mende]

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K: Krzysztof Trela, S: Katarzyna Leśniak
D: Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovic, Valentin Novopolskij and others

Organizer: Polish Institute Berlin

Info: https://instytutpolski.pl/berlin/2025/12/02/under-the-grey-sky/

Photo © filmPOLSKA / Pod szarym niebem