Belarusian Film Director: The Authorities Fear and Convulse

• 23.06.2020, 14:02

Darya Zhuk commented on the Belarusian elections.

Famous Belarusian and American film director Darya Zhuk, author of Crystal that competed in Oscar, recalled her detention in 1996 and commented on the elections in Belarus, reports Radio Svaboda.

"Belarusians are no longer afraid. The authorities started to fear. They convulse.

They used to imprison political opponents and grab people from the streets because they participated in the protests.

I was beaten in 1996, I was 16. Now I'm 40. I realize that I've spent eternity in a dream, not feeling that my voice in Belarus can ever make a difference. Having heard clever and, by the way, quite moderate politically promising candidates for the presidency, I longed to awake. I wanted to share my voice driven by love.

A brave new generation has grown up. The older generation, very conservative in the past (like many of my friends' parents and grandmothers), has found time to listen to their inner voice during a semi-quarantine. This voice has been crying for a long time now "That's enough!"

It's time to wake up, think about the country we want to live in and vote in fair elections!"

Darya Zhuk was born in a journalist family in Minsk. After graduation in the 1990s, she went to the U.S. as part of an exchange program. She graduated from college, then received a scholarship at Harvard. She has an economic education, worked on Wall Street, then she took screenwriting courses at Columbia University and worked for HBO channel. She's a film director, a producer, a screenwriter. She's the winner of various cinematographic awards.