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I find this one haunting. It has a distinct, sharp flavour. This kind of place, Bucha, Irpin, Vorzel, Hostomel and Brovary have a bitter familiarity to me, as do other city outskirts in Europe. They are somewhere between the rural world of secrets, mysterious powers, childhood enchantments with nature and the urban world, drier and more anonymous, where things and people disappear and stories become suffocated. It reminds me of Muratova's masterpiece "Among Grey Stones".

The surreal mixing of Boychukism and Ukrainian Poetic cinema also seduces me. There is a typically Ukrainian treatment of space. It is both alive and physical. There is a perversion of reality in Kovalyov's film that is stunning. The space feels both real, mythical and feverishly imagined.

I don't have an easy answer for this film.

Having snuffed out the memory of WW2 until 1965, Soviet authorities transformed the war into a central myth. This film is particularly bizarre and slippery. It is about humanising Soviet victims... but not too much because those victims were Belarusians. It is also about proclaiming the humanity of Belarusians whilst using Khatyn to sow confusion about Katyn and the Soviet's genocidal slaughter of Poles. Khatyn became more important than deadlier Nazi massacres, Jewish victims were diminished. Nazi-Soviet collaboration was erased.

Another fact erased was that many of the murderers were Ukrainian. The same way that many killers at Oradour sur Glane were French Alsatians, a taboo fell upon this crime. Many Ukrainians fell victim to fascism, but the centring on the racial identity of fascist criminals has not helped historical discussion, nuance and reconciliation. To tell the truth is to respect the victims.

Nonetheless, Belarusians have used the story of WW2 hardship to express Belarusian culture and identity, as a means to offer a window into the lives of ordinary Belarusians. Come and See, White Dew, The Ascent, Alpine Ballad, Eastern Corridor are some of these films.

And this is how the film sits on weird fault lines between official Soviet narrative and human artistic expression. It exists as a projection of Moscow's rhetoric and an expression of Belarusian culture. It is a balancing act that failed since the film was banned.

It echoes the best of cinema direct and Baltic poetic cinema. Ales Adamovich worked on this film and the focus on human voices and faces echoes his polyphonic writing and Come and See, a film based on his written work. It shows a portrait of a conflicted, pained, traumatised and vulnerable Belarus. It is not a clean, immaculate martyrdom that Soviet cinema would come to favour. An uncomfortable truth of a powerless Soviet Union, one that is absent in the time of great need looms over the film. It hints at a permanent cultural loss and a reshaping of Belarusian identity in the shadow of ruins, bunkers and discarded shell casings.

The film is unfortunately unsteady, the focus is shifting. It goes from moments of greatness to more amateurish scenes. The montage sequence of the Khatyn memorial was poor. The building of the Khatyn statue appears in a clumsy and confusing way.

But scenes around the hospital for war victims are stunning, akin to a suite of idyllic tableaux of impressionist tableaux, presenting an uncomfortable proximity between leisure, mundanity and the continued struggle of veterans and victims still bearing wartime shrapnel.

There are things that make the film uncomfortable. Firstly, the russification of Belarusian names, stripping victims of their language and the true names they used in daily life. Secondly, the accusatory interviews with tourists in Miensk who don't know Khatyn. How could they when Soviet authorities scrubbed and obscured WW2 history? Thirdly, a scene filmed from a Mercedes Benz, with a hood ornament seemingly stalking a civilian and a voice over reading an SS member dreaming of nuking the Soviets. It implies a racial threat from Germans and not an ideological threat. It betrays the truth that Ukrainians slaughtered people in Khatyn and that fascist crimes were multi-ethnic.

It is an imperfect film and an interesting one. It is a fascinating stepping stone and a work with unused potential. I hope to see more Belarusian films since their culture fascinates me. They are among the best people I have ever met.

Zhive Belarus.

A forest warden, powerless in face of Soviet devastation wrought on the natural world echoes the powerlessness of Estonians under tyranny. The film contrasts the Estonian people's love for nature with the cold and cynical Muscovian rule, reducing land to resource extraction.

The film has stunning images, beautiful montage, but the film is at times blunt and has aggressive, repetitive organ music.

Baltic films are a fascinating window into the Soviet bloc and into land still controlled by Moscow. Their relative freedom allows us to gaze at life with a degree of honesty rarely found in the Eastern bloc. How this film wasn't banned stuns me.