Motherland review: Urgent doc on the horrors of the Belarusian military

The power of a documentary lies in how it tells a story that is sufficiently complex and deserving of the spotlight. More times than not, the subject itself is so tremendous that the format of the documentary takes a backseat. That is not the case with Motherland, the powerful new documentary by Alexander Mihalkovich and Hanna Badziaka, which marked its World Premiere at the 2023 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and won the top award. Focused on the state-sponsored cycle of violence and abuse in the Belarusian military, Motherland is a brutal and atmospheric film that charges on a pivotal part of history still unfolding in the present. (Also read: By Heart review: Behind the scenes with Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini)

The opening card suggests how the Belarusian military follows a horrifying practice named dedovshchina (which literally means the reign of grandads), in which the senior soldiers violently torture and abuse the new conscripts. Conspicuously, the soldiers often die before even completing the initial months of the training, but their deaths are certified as suicide. No evidences are to be found; no reason of foul play are to be entertained. The silence from the other side of the regime is deafening, as the filmmakers evoke in their stark, visceral runtime of 92 minutes. The effect is galvanizing.

The introduction to this vicious cycle of horror begins at the army graduation ceremony, where the young and the hopeful army trainees smile and click pictures with their family one last time before starting their military training. Little do they know what will follow, as Motherland then outlines the horrors of this context from two perspectives. On one side there is Svetlana, the grieving mother of Sasha, who was found dead in the military. Yet, she explains early on, when she received his body, it was covered with blue marks and bruises that went unaccounted for. “They didn’t even let me take pictures,” she says. Her heartbreaking anguish is covered with a soft, porous voiceover that reads the occasional letters Mihalkovich wrote to his own mother. Siarhiej Kanaplianik’s stunning camerawork often sees her standing by the window or standing beside her son’s grave, simply watching. There’s no definition or curiosity that tears at her grief for the lens, nor a heightened sense of despair. The score by Yngve Leidulv Sætre and Thomas Angell Endresen remains understated and effective.

The other perspective arrives in the form of young Nikita, who is about to receive his conscription order, and face his anxieties and doubts surrounding it. His father still holds on to the esteem of the military, and fully believes that the prospect will fare well for his son. Mihalkovich and Badziaka follow Nikita’s enrollment in the successive days through the video call interactions with his friends as he grows increasingly distant and anxious of his days there. With the 2020 re-election of Putin sympathiser Alexander Lukashenko, the protests take shape with startling call for action. One harrowing sequence follows a car vandalized by the authorities, chasing the civilians down and arresting them for ‘unlawful’ protests. Another shocking scene erupts midday on a street when police brutality results in a man’s death.

Theses varying perspectives add depth and precision to a circle of trauma and resilience that cannot be recorded from the inside. What happens within those military cells are left to realize in the deaths of countless young citizens of the country. Mihalkovich and Badziaka’s introspective work channels these layers of violence in a culture that propagates in conformity and silence. Motherland paints a portrait of a land at violent odds with its people, where billboards proclaim the service to the army while the graveyards become crowded with more deaths of the country’s men. Svetlana cannot even find a priest to bless her son’s grave. She waits and waits, her face turning cold with tears. There is no end to the grief and the injustices that have been perpetuating in the unlawful regime. It will silence and suppress anyone who will raise their voice against the propaganda. Motherland is an urgent, ferocious work, and utterly unmissable.