This year's Belarusian competition consists of 12 films: full-length and short films; feature films, documentaries, and animations; social, romantic, and comedy movies. The films of the Belarusian competition will traditionally be evaluated by an international jury, which includes Ukrainian producer Darya Bassel, Belarusian director Aliaksei Paluyan, and director of the Berlinale European Film Market Dennis Ruh.

The film winning the Grand Prix will receive a monetary prize of $1,200, while the film selected by the jury for the Special Award will receive $800.

Also, the jury may additionally mark the pictures of the competition with a special mention. Prize support is provided by the TV channel «Настоящее время» (Current Time).

The film "Everything is fine. I'm sleeping" will not be competing for prize money.

belarusian competition jury

Darya Bassel used to work in TV and commercial production. In 2011, she joined Docudays UA IHRDFF, where she worked as a programmer and later as head of the industry platform. She started her career as a producer in 2013. She has participated in the Eurodoc, Producers Network (Marché du Film), Ex Oriente, and EAVE, and has also worked as a jury member at festivals such as Visions du reel, IDFA, Cinedoc Tbilisi, Astra, OIFF, One World Prague, and Krakow IFF. Among her producer's titles are Outside (2022), which had its world premiere at CPH:DOX and was screened at more than 20 film festivals around the globe, and Butterfly's Vision (2022), which premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. She is also a co-producer on the Oscar-nominated, award-winning documentary A House Made Of Splinters (2022).

Darya
Bassel

Film producer, head of the industry platform for Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival

UKRAINE

Aliaksei Paluyan was born in Belarus in 1989. He is known as a director of short fiction films and creative documentaries that have been presented at festivals worldwide. Aliaksei is a member of the European Film Academy, co-founder of the Belarusian Independent Film Academy, and a Berlinale Talents alumnus. In 2019, his short fiction drama Lake Of Happiness premiered in Clermont-Ferrand and won numerous awards at international film festivals before being nominated in the short film category at the 2020 European Film Awards and longlisted for Best Live Action Short at the 2021 Oscars. In 2021, his documentary debut Courage premiered at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival and was subsequently screened at major film festivals including IDFA, Visions du Réel, CPH:DOX, HotDocs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Krakow IFF. It has also been longlisted for the 2022 Academy Awards.

Aliaksei Paluyan

director

BELARUS

Dennis Ruh has been the director of the European Film Market since 2020. He studied cultural sciences, audiovisual communication, social science, and history in Bremen, Germany, and Valencia, Spain. During his studies, Dennis began working for the Oldenburg International Film Festival in 2008 and became a co-director in 2011. Starting in 2010, he also worked for Independent Partners Film. From 2012 to 2020, Ruh was department head for International Festival Relations & Producers Liaison at German Films. He regularly appears as a guest lecturer at film schools and a panelist at industry conferences and film festivals. Dennis has also served on various juries.

Dennis
Ruh

Director of the European Film Market

GERMANY