Article by Davide Lassandro

Translation by Federica Lozito

After directing a series of short films focusing on socio-political issues, Mara Tamkovich makes her debut with her first feature film, evocatively titled Under the Grey Sky, which takes the viewer back to the events following the 2020 Belarusian elections and the events in Square of Changes in Minsk, where riot police attacked unarmed protesters during a peaceful demonstration after Lukashenko’s proclamation, resulting in arrests and violence.

This is the beginning of a tight, dramatic narrative that focuses for about eighty minutes on the imprisonment of journalist Lena (Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovic), who was arrested for commenting on the events in live streaming. A simple yet extremely effective direction made up of long close-ups, fixed shots, and cold, natural photography that narrates the journalist’s story through the perspective of her husband Ilya (Valentin Novopolsky), who is almost always trapped in grey, distressing environments where silence and anguish prevail.

The entire film portrays the harsh reality of repression in a totalitarian regime that stifles all forms of expression and free thought by imprisoning and silencing every divergent voice. A vivid and disturbing testimony, more relevant than ever, of how political systems based on social control repress with censorship and coercion any attempt to tell and document reality. It is an opportunity for deep reflection on what every citizen can do, what art can do, and how cinema can still have the power to restore sensations and atmospheres by taking a stand.