Best Belarusian drama movies

Soldier Boy (2019)

This is a story about exciting events that occurred in the life of the smallest soldier - the hero of the Great Patriotic War, six-year-old Sergei Aleshkov. He lost all his relatives and got into the army. With a six-year-old boy, they started playing the soldier game in order to preserve his childhood, and he, in order to comply with this honorary title, became a real defender of the Motherland.

The Road to Mother (2016)

When the Soviets impose new ways of collective farming and permanent settlements on a region of nomadic dwellers, young Ilyas is separated from his mother, Mariam. Through decades of war, mother and son persevere in their efforts to be reunited.

On the Nameless Height (2004)

The location is the Belarusian forests, close to the Polish border, during Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944. After a short pause, the Red Army is preparing to advance, but on one segment of the front there are two serious obstacles: an unnamed hill with unknown German strength, and a highly skilled German sniper, who is killing off not only Russian officers, but also all captured German officers before they can be interrogated. Because of this, the local commander, Major Inozemtsev, suspects that the hill is a trap, which the Germans are very eager to keep a secret.

Franz + Polina (2006)

The movie tells the story of Franz, a Waffen-SS soldier who deserts, and Polina, a Belarusian woman whose village is razed and people massacred.

Подрыв (2023)

To Leave and to Not Return (1992)

A tragic story of love and betrayal during WWII.

From Hell to Hell (1997)

Focuses on the lives of two married Polish couples (one Jewish, one Catholic) and the personal and social devastation wrought by the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Girl Seeks Father (1959)

A girl searches for her father while beeing chased by Nazis.

Across the Cemetery (1965)

On his way to conquer Moscow, Hitler first had to occupy Belorussia and Ukraine, which is why it's no wonder that a large and important segment of Soviet partisan cinema stems from these two Soviet republics as a result. In Belorussia, the foremost poet laureate assigned to commemorate the horrors and celebrate the glories of the Great Patriotic War was People's Artist of the USSR Viktor Turov. His dedication to the genre was deeply personal. Turov, born in 1936, spent his childhood in a German concentration camp along with his mother and sister, while his father, a partisan, died in battle. Turov's righteous anger, passionate call-to-arms, and simultaneous embrace of humanism as parallel forces of salvation are therefore not a result of any ideology, but rather deeply felt moral imperatives, already forming the driving force for his first feature Cherez kladbishche.

Ball Gown (2003)

The girl Vika and her sick mother live in their apartment, which is claimed by her mother's sister, Klaudia. One day Mila, Klaudia's daughter, moves in with Vika and her mother, who tries to establish her own rules in the house. Vika is quietly but stubbornly fighting against the new order. At a party hosted by Mila, a boy appears who becomes Vika's loyal friend.

Luka (2013)

Year 1917. Young doctor Valentin Voyno-Yasenetskyj with his wife and four children moved to Tashkent, beset by civil war and intervention. Voyno-Yasenetskyj became head physician in the city hospital. He not only saves hundreds of patients every day, operating under the bullets of the permanent street battles, fighting for his life and life of his beloved wife, dying of TB. In the midst of persecution, he as alone with four children on the outskirts of the former empire, so he decides to become a priest. And since then, he never altered neither scalpel, nor cross, he goes with them through all their hard exiles and arduous life, treating both: body and soul.

Kupala (2020)

A story about the dramatic fate of the national poet of Belarus Yanka Kupala. The movie reveals the main milestones of the poet’s life and career, coinciding with the most tragic events of the 20th century.

Birds Without Nests (1996)

A biography of the famous Belarus poetess Larisa Antonovna Geniyush.

...I Will Repay (1993)

The film focuses on the relationship between Casimir and the monk Justin. If the former is looking for answers to the questions of existence, the latter is sure that he has already comprehended all the mysteries. Ambitious and domineering, Justin believes that people should be kept in constant fear. Kazimir, on the other hand, strives for freedom of the spirit and comes to the conclusion that people pray to the wrong God and are therefore unhappy. These antipodes value each other in their own way. Justin, sending Casimir to the stake, loses the only person close to him. In his last moments, Kazimir does not hate Justin.

Zorka Venus (2000)

The story of a young Oksana who became addicted to drugs, the story of her sister Pavla and neighbor Vasily - children who love Oksana and are ready to sacrifice everything to save her. The only thing they are able to counteract evil is their kindness and compassion, their masculinity and their desire to help a girl in trouble...

White Lake (1992)

A story about two homeless teenagers who have a dream - to visit a beautiful White Lake.

Crystal Swan (2018)

Minsk, Belarus, 1996. Velya, an aspiring DJ, wants to move to Chicago to make her dreams come true, but bureaucracy, a phone line and the human condition will put obstacles in her way that will be difficult to avoid.

I Won't Come Back (2014)

Anya, a young academic raised in an orphanage, is on the cusp of success when she’s accused of drug possession. While in limbo hiding from the police, she hits the road with Kristina, another orphan several years Anya’s junior, in search of her possibly mythical grandmother.

1986 (2019)

Elena is a student in Minsk. She is having an intense but self-destructive love affair with Viktor. When Elena's father goes to prison she has to take charge of his business dealings to help him. She drives repeatedly into the restricted zone at Chernobyl, behind the wheel of a truck, in order to smuggle contaminated steel. The conflicts with Viktor escalate, and Elena is increasingly captivated by the zone's deceptive beauty...

II (2019)

Nastya, Sasha and Kristina are 16 years old. They study together at a school in a Belarusian town and live ordinary teenager lives, with the usual problems and dreams. Nastya wants a better life. Her dream is to study in Poland. Several times a week she goes to a private Polish language tutor. On these trips she is accompanied by her friend Sasha. The boy is constantly bullied by his schoolmates, who think he is gay. As for Kristina, she doesn’t plan on studying and is mostly interested in dating her new boyfriend. The school follows a severe law of rules and discipline that hasn’t changed much since Soviet times. The only person who stands out is a young English teacher. One day everything changes. A shocking event brings out fears, prejudice and hatred of those who are different.

The Role (2013)

The Role is about a brilliant actor in revolutionary Russia who takes on the greatest role of his life - the role of another man. Influenced by the ideas of symbolism and the Silver Age, he decides to slip into the life of his doppelganger – a revolutionary leader in the new Soviet Russia. First intrigued, then obsessed, he flings himself into the role and lives it to the hilt… even when the play of the life he is writing heads towards a tragic finale. Based on true incidents in the lives of Russia’s symbolists, this gripping film explores how far one man will go for the role of a lifetime.

Лекі для веры (2021)

Father Michael has recently been appointed to the parish and is happy together with his wife Vera. But soon trouble comes to his house - his beloved wife falls ill. Doctors offer a drug, the purchase of which requires a significant amount of money. To save his wife, Mikhail gets a job as a truck driver - he has long business trips ahead of him. On the way, he will face many trials and fateful meetings with a variety of people.

Ivan & Abraham (1993)

In 1930s Poland Christian boy Ivan goes to live with a Jewish family to learn a trade. He becomes friends with Abraham, the son of the family. However, anti-Semitism is rife in their environment, and they flee to escape an upcoming conflict. Journeying together, they demonstrate their inseparability.

I Remember (2005)

Son for Father... (1995)

A successful Moscow doctor, who has his own clinic, comes to his father in Minsk. His father was once one of the leading doctors of the city, and now he turned out to be unnecessary and forgotten. His son helps him start a new business. But it turns out that the father's worst enemy is his most reliable girlfriend.

Minsk (2022)

Minsk, August 2020. Pasha and Yulia, a young married couple, leave the house at night and find themselves in the midst of peaceful protests. Everyday walk turns into a real hell, in which innocent people are victims of police brutality.

Tomorrow (2017)

In a small, snow-covered town in Belarus, a former English teacher manages to scrape a living distributing leaflets to people’s letterboxes. In the evening, he joins his wife in their dingy apartment, and together they reminisce about their son, a student in Minsk they rarely see. Possibly their only excitement of the week is buying a lottery ticket, which, for a few seconds, gives them a chance to dream. Yuliya Shatun’s camera, at first oddly focused on the white expanses along every roadside, then begins to scrutinise the teacher in his comings and goings – a precise recording with, however, a hint of the moroseness of a terrain so rare in today’s cinema. The teacher has stoically adapted to a degenerate world and a life fuelled by stifled shame. An odour of neglect wafts between the apartment blocks, the uttered words and the background noise of the television. A certain irony floats in the air too, and it needs Yuliya Shatun’s patience to grasp and take responsibility for it.

Falling Upwards (1998)

In a car accident, the boy loses his parents and is confined to a wheelchair. Becoming the creator of his world and his destiny, the young hero overcomes personal tragedy.

Burn (1998)

Prosecutor Azhogin, who sent many criminals to prison, by the will of fate himself ends up behind bars. He is placed in a cell with juvenile lawbreakers. The situation is far from the worst one. So thinks the Azhogin, who eventually becomes a true friend and mentor of his fourteen-year-old inmates...

Sketch on the Monitor (2001)

Beautiful stories end with a wedding, and the ugly ones begin after it. At least, this is the opinion of a young writer, who went to a wedding celebration and learned three stories there: about a lonely physicist, about a doctor trying to start a new life, and about a policeman who fears his own wife more than someone else's bullet.