Kalinovski Square

n March 2006, presidential elections were held in Belarus. Despite the hopes of the opposition and many outside the country, Alexander Lukashenko was re–elected for a third consecutive term in manipulated elections; the official result gave him over 85 percent of the vote. The well known Belarusian director Yuri Chashchevatsky was an observer of the elections and the events surrounding them. He filmed pre–election meetings, the proclamations of candidates, anti–Lukashenko demonstrations and interviews with opponents of the regime who were arrested. In his new film Kalinovski Square, Chashchevatsky manages, as in the earlier An Ordinary President, to transform the dark and despotic goings on of present–day Belarus into exquisite political satire. With irony and humour, he points to what the country suffers from most of all – the dictator Lukashenko's self–centred understanding of the world and the totalitarian method of rule which springs from it. The picture also amusingly lifts the lid on an elaborate state apparatus which does not allow the slightest sign of democratisation, and a "free" election which turns into farce.