Yuri Kashchevatsky.

Khashchevatsky's works have been featured and decorated in dozens of film festivals in Russia, Europe, and The United States.  Needless to say, his films are banned in Belarus. An Ordinary President (Berlin International Film Festival 1997) is a scathing satire of Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenka, in which Khashchevatsky paints his subject as a Hitler-sympathizing despot. Yuri Khashchevatsky's persona non grata status with the Lukashenka regime only adds to his celebrity in Belarus and abroad, just like it would have in Soviet times. In March 2006, Lukashenka won another rigged election, and thousands of Belarusian youth took part in a protest in Minsk's October Square.  A brutal police suppression and shameful looting of the protesters' property followed.  Khashchevatsky masterfully captured the startling events using hidden cameras.  Ploscha ('Square') (2007) became an underground phenomenon.  Using the power and anonymity of the Internet, tens of thousands of Belarusians have downloaded the artful documentary.The visionary director has come a long way from his beginnings at the St Petersburg Film Academy, where he was influenced by the likes of Fellini, Bergman, and the Soviet director Mikhail Romm.  Today, Khashchevatsky's accolades include awards from film festivals in Kiev, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Munich, San Francisco, Geneva, and New York.  The international film circuit has also recently brought him to Paris, Boston, Rome and Jerusalem.

Semeyon Friendland.