Kryvija Belarus Litva

Both the front and back covers are an artwork by Maroz, Shall the Sun Shine Once Through Our Window, with the title in three languages wrapping around the spine.

“I grew up in Vitebsk, Belarus, during the 2000s, when local networks were booming. Driven by curiosity and a desire to connect, my neighbors and I embarked on a DIY project to build a complex local network—just for communication and learning, without any involvement from big companies or organizations. We started by connecting computers within our building, then expanded the network to other buildings, and eventually across entire districts, running cables from rooftop to rooftop. Our network was called s7.lan, named after the South 7 district. It was a self-organized initiative fueled by enthusiasm and problem-solving, and at its peak, over 1,000 computers were connected.”

Ліна Дрэйк

Ліна Дрэйк

King Stakh’s Wild Hunt

“Based on the 1964 novel by Uladzimir Karatkievich, it has a classic storybook framework: set in the 19th century and told by an elderly Belarusian ethnographer, Andrey (Andrei Bondarenko), it recounts his youthful encounter with Nadzeya (Tamara Kalinkina), a woman of noble birth who is trapped by a family curse. It was laid, generations ago, by King Stakh who, with his men, was duped into drinking poison by her ancestor and who all now stalk the grounds as violent spectres.

“Transplanted Minsk residents pointed out the different people at the tables: an opposition politician eating a burger, a youth activist drinking a beer, Minsk’s best-known society photographer snapping pictures with one hand while holding a glass of white wine in the other.

Levon Halatrian, one of the bar’s owners, ran a bar in Minsk before the 2020 elections, when he joined the campaign team of opposition leader Viktor Babariko, who was jailed and barred from running in the August vote.

Halatrian was also jailed after the protests, and spent some months in prison before being transferred to a labour camp. He arrived in Warsaw in January and opened Backdoor Bar in March, together with two others who ran a bar of the same name back in Minsk.”

“About 80% of our guests are Belarusians, most of the rest are Ukrainians. Occasionally a lost British tourist will wander in, or sometimes even a Pole,” he said.

The tech workers exiled from Europe’s last dictatorship ❖ Rest of World

Motherland • 2023

“Slow-burn, depth-charge doc follows a young Belarusian embarking on compulsory military service and a mother seeking justice for her son, who died during his.”

Disco Boy • 2023

“Giacomo Abbruzzese’s drama follows Belarusian Aleksei on his journey into the French Foreign Legion and a very strange epiphany in the Niger Delta.”

“Belarusian was already significantly different from Russian and other Slavic languages when it was first mentioned. Historical documents in the Belarusian language first appeared after the Belarusians adopted Christianity. In 986, Icelandic missionary Thorvald Konradsson baptized the Belarusian lands. Even then, however, the Belarusians rejected the rules of the Old Church Slavonic language in favor of their own. Later, in the 13th-16th centuries, Belarus was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Europe's largest state since the 14th century. In addition to the Belarusian lands, the principality included the territories of the modern Baltic states, as well as parts of Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.”

“A key figure in the history of the Belarusian language is Francysk Skaryna, who played a huge role in the birth of the entire East Slavic book printing. His name is mentioned on par with such famous figures of the European Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Jan Amos Komensky. Francysk Skaryna went down in history as the “father of Eastern European book publishing” for printing the first Bible in Old Belarusian in 1517. This is how Belarusian became the first East Slavic language in which book printing began. Francysk Skaryna’s legacy numbers 520 books, many of which are in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany.”