In the evening of 9 February 2022, four young men sit around a table in Kyiv. The friends are discussing the situation: 120,000 Russian soldiers are stationed right at the Ukrainian border. What is going to happen? In “The Birds Are Silent”, director and cinematographer Leo Dzhyshyashvili captures an equally private and historical moment. What is striking is the clarity with which Andriy, Olexandr, Ivan and Sasha assess the consequences of the imminent attack: Potential decisions about their own future are mixed with concerns about relatives and the bewilderment at being thrown into a situation that provokes both helplessness and disgust. But there is a glimmer of hope – perhaps the imagined horror scenarios are nothing but a waste of energy? Cut. Some of the debaters have become soldiers; one has barricaded himself in the bathroom with a narrow mattress and a meal. Within eight minutes, Dzhyshyashvili has tied together a before and after that make you shudder.

In 2020, the biggest protests against the government to date formed in Belarus. The protesters were met with violence and restrictions, many of them were given draconian prison sentences. A dangerous climate that sought to nip political activism in the bud took hold. For “Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus,” Juliane Tutein filmed and researched for three years in a country that had not seen a change of elites with its supposed independence in 1991. She discovered mainly women at the forefront of the courageous protesters. This portrait is dedicated to three of them: Nina Baginskaya, in her mid-seventies and active in the fight for an open Belarus since the 1980s, Tatsyana “Tanya” Hatsura-Yavorskaya, founder of the human rights film festival “Watch Docs”, and Darya Rublevskaya, the youngest at 22, who works for the “Viasna” human rights centre founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski. Tutein develops a polyphonic collage in which Minsk’s intimidating architecture has the same haunting impact as Hatsura-Yavorskaya’s escape into a Ukraine attacked by Russia.

The six Albanian Burrneshas who tell their stories here want to decide for themselves how they want to live. They realised early on that the patriarchal society severely restricts their freedom. So they became Burrneshas and slipped into the social role of men in order to have agency, be independent and able to support their family economically, to escape forced marriages and harassment. And they have a lot of fun along the way, too. But breaking through gender barriers comes with a price. You stay a Burrnesha for life, sealed by an oath. The price of freedom is usually the renunciation of an openly lived sexuality, children and a family.
The impressive protagonists of this superbly photographed film show how much strength it takes to practise masculine gender stereotypes. Not all of them have enough energy to simultaneously assert and subvert clichés and male claims to power. For the new generation of feminists in Albania, the Burrneshas are role models, but also a warning. Because the goal of emancipation is far from achieved just because an avant-garde of courageous women manage to smuggle themselves into the heart of the patriarchy with a leap. If you are after the system, you must not copy the structures but abolish them.