On August 9, 2020, Belarus held a presidential election. The outcome was predetermined, as usual in the post-Soviet country where Aliaksandr Lukashenka held power since being elected to the presidency in 1994. Over time, Lukashenka had slowly increased and concentrated power in the presidency and assured he would remain uncontested by controlling the information space and eliminating opposition. In 2020, Lukashenka detained or forced major political rivals into exile prior to the election. His administration oversaw the election commission and vote counting. In the evening of election day, the commission announced that Lukashenka had received 80.1% of the vote. This was not surprising. This is how the four elections between 1994 and 2020 had gone, and why Belarusians were often cynical about the potential for change. What was surprising was the mass mobilization of the opposition—the largest in the 26 years of Lukashenka's rule—and the size and duration of peaceful protests that followed the election.

The regime “responded with unjustified, disproportionate, and often arbitrary force.” For a time, this display of brute force by the State further encouraged the resistance and destabilized the notion that Lukashenka had the support of the majority of Belarusians. Eventually, with the aid of Russian authorities, dissent was suppressed through thousands of detentions and the use of torture; the closure of all independent media, arts venues, and independent nongovernmental organizations; show trials; propaganda; firings; and forced exile. Nevertheless, as Alyena Batura has written, the 2020 civic mobilization “transformed an apathetic populace into active citizens” and “led to the creation of networks of solidarity and mutual support.” This book looks at how several theatre artists and filmmakers joined the opposition and used their own precarious bodies and artforms to help mobilize communities, oppose the State's propaganda narratives, agitate for political prisoners, collectively mourn, and “preserve the face of violence for the distant future.”