Andrei Kutsila’s documentary “Letters From the Silenced Country” has been awarded the Golden Globes Impact Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival. The honor, presented in partnership with the Artemis Rising Foundation, recognizes feature-length nonfiction films within the festival’s official selection that address significant social issues through journalistic and creative excellence.
Premiering out of competition, the film explores contemporary Belarus by following five individuals whose lives have been shattered by state-sponsored violence and political repression. Rather than offering a sweeping political analysis, the documentary centers on intimate personal narratives of protest, incarceration, escape, and daily acts of defiance.
The narrative structure is built around letters written from prisons, exile, and underground environments. Kutsila combines observational footage, archival material, and animation derived from drawings produced during confinement to illustrate the human cost of living under authoritarian pressure.
The award jury included Filipino-American actress Liza Soberano, Golden Globes president Helen Hoehne, Oscar-winning producer and Artemis Rising Foundation founder Regina K. Scully, Oscar-winning producer and Impact Partners co-founder Geralyn White Dreyfous, and Danielle Turkov Wilson, founder and CEO of Think-Film Impact Production.
In a joint statement, the jury praised the film for “putting a human face on a crisis too often reduced to headlines and numbers.” They noted that while the story is rooted in Belarus, its themes resonate globally, speaking to anyone who has loved someone from a distance or struggled to maintain their identity under threat of erasure.
“The way the director blends letters, drawings, and memory into the storytelling captures not only grief, but love, hope, and tenderness – the full range of what it means to remain human,” the jury said, calling the film a powerful example of how deeply personal stories can achieve universal impact.
The prize includes a $10,000 cash award from the Artemis Rising Foundation. Earlier this year, filmmakers Joshua and Rebecca Tickell received the same accolade at the Cannes Film Festival.
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