Handbook

How do you go about crushing a protest? Handbook provides a comprehensive answer to this question. It includes almost everything, except no actual beatings take place in this instruction video. It’s August 2020. While in Minsk protests are mounting against Lukashenko’s re-election, Pavel Mozhar follows the developments in his homeland from his room in Berlin. Over these few days, around 7,000 protesters were arrested by the notorious OMON riot police. Mozhar studied hundreds of witness statements on the internet and discovered there was a systemic approach to the oppression. He transforms his room into a studio where he stages re-enactments of witness testimonies by a “police officer” wearing black clothes and a balaclava, and four “detainees” dressed identically in shirts and jeans. The result is distressingly instructive. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)