Belsat-affiliated Belarusian director and documentary filmmaker Mikhail Arshynski has received an award from the Hinzpeter Awards, South Korea’s largest film festival. His film “Don’t Be Afraid,” about the fate of the Belarusian people and the 2020 elections, won the festival’s top prize, The World at a Crossroads Award.
The prize was awarded in 2021, but only now Mikhail Arshynski was able to receive it in person.
Hinzpeter is a South Korean festival named after German journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter, the only journalist to document and show to the world the crimes of South Korean dictator Pak Chung-Hee, which contributed to the protests and revival of democracy in South Korea in the 1980s.
Arshynski met with members of the South Korean Documentary Association and other Korean journalists, participated in a democracy forum, and attended the anniversary of the 1980 protests in the city of Gwangju that were sparked by Hinzpeter’s publications.
He also attended the opening of an exhibition of war photos from Ukraine by South Korean reporter Kish Kim and met with him.
“During the visit I talked about the difficulties of working as an independent journalist in authoritarian countries and about my work on the documentary “Don’t Be Afraid”. I shared information about imprisoned journalists, including Katsyaryna Andreyeva of Belsat, who was sentenced to 8 years and 3 months in prison by the Lukashenka regime. We also talked about the human rights situation and the problem of Russification of Belarus, both of which are related to the regime acting in the interests of the Kremlin,” Arshynski told Belsat.
Last year, the film “Don’t Be Afraid” was also awarded at the London Film Festival.
MaH/ belsat.eu according to inf.
