Yelena looked at the gray sky. Snow was starting to fall, soft and indifferent. “We do what Belarusians have always done. We make a different film.”
Valentin was a retired KGB colonel who now ran a small museum dedicated to Belarusian silent cinema. He wore thick spectacles and a cardigan with elbow patches. He looked like everyone’s favorite grandfather. He also had, Yelena knew, the only working copy of a 1987 internal security manual on “the handling of unauthorized foreign image capture.” film fixers in belarus
Yelena finally looked up. “The Berezina. Near the old partisan bunkers?” Yelena looked at the gray sky
“You don’t fight the system,” Valentin said, pouring them all bad coffee. “You give it a better story. The militia don’t care about your peat harvesters. They care about looking competent. So tomorrow, you will go to the station with a letter from the Ministry of Tourism—which Yelena will have by morning—declaring your film to be an official cultural exchange project about ‘Traditional Belarusian Bog Agriculture and Its Intangible Heritage.’ You will also bring three bottles of good vodka, not the supermarket kind, and you will thank the officer for safeguarding your equipment from ‘potential smugglers.’ You will not mention the memory card. Yelena will handle the card.” We make a different film