Not to be sheeple: latest Malanka.media release documents Viasna work in exile Video

Malanka.media released the documentary Not to be sheeple about the arduous destiny of human rights defenders. The film is part of a joint effort between documentary filmmakers and Viasna Human Rights Center.  

“After 2020, many of those who helped Belarusians defend their rights ended up in prison. Friends and colleagues of the veteran human rights defender and Viasna leader Ales Bialiatski, who also faced repression but unlike him managed to leave the country, are now working hard to resume the organization. In their words defending human rights is not a profession but a way of life. Even being caught in the cauldron of war in Ukraine, they continued to help people despite the danger to their lives. Today our heroes are in Lithuania, but the roar of civil aircraft and blasts of fireworks still recall the airstrikes on peaceful cities. And the former KGB building, which was turned into the Museum of Occupation and Fights for Freedom, and also the Soviet history park near Druskininkai do not seem harmless artifacts from the past at all. What Belarusians mean by ‘Not to be sheeple’ and how not to get trapped in the most terrible pages of history, we tell in the new film by Malanka.Doc,” the film's synopsis reads.

The film tells about the work of Viasna human rights defenders who became refugees twice —first, after they were forced to leave Belarus for Ukraine and then after the war drove them to Lithuania.

The film is scheduled to be screened at a number of international human rights film festivals.