FEELS LIKE HOME | NORTHERN LIGHTS FF & TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FF

Facing displacement and building a film community in exile

Joint panel discussion organized by the Northern Lights Film Festival and the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival After the 2020 revolution and subsequent severe repressions in Belarus, thousands of people were forced to flee their homes and start life anew. Now, independent Belarusian filmmakers reside all over the world but are unable to travel back to their homeland and film there. The risk of being imprisoned and subjected to torture is way too high to take it. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, little has changed in the Belarusian film industry. Even with international funding, independent filmmaking has been barely surviving since then. In 2020, the hope for development and change was pushed even further back, and now independent Belarusian cinema has to find ways to survive and thrive in exile. How do we solidify the community in exile and find resources and mechanisms to move on in life and filmmaking? We explore Belarusian, Estonian, and international experiences.

Language of the event: English