The Reporting from the Rabbit Hutch

The opening scenes of THE REPORTING FROM THE RABBIT HUTCH show a festive parade, having as its cheerful centre Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. ‘O, we love our leader so very much’, the voice-over says with a voice that oozes sarcasm. What director Victor Dashuk shows in the next forty minutes is horrifying, to put it mildly. Lukashenko is a dictator who ruthlessly puts his political opponents behind bars without a chance of a fair trial or has them mistreated physically as a ‘warning.’ Not only politicians, also artists or journalists who speak negatively about the President are in danger. Kidnappings and murders are daily events in Belarus. According to a journalist who is interviewed by Dashuk and whose colleague has recently disappeared, Lukashenko is ‘sick, disturbed and gone completely astray.’ The stirring THE REPORTING FROM THE RABBIT HUTCH is a remarkably courageous cry of distress from an often neglected far-off corner of Europe, with which both the director and the interviewees put their own lives at risk.