Black Poliuka

Tania Licheuskaya / Belarus, Germany / 2024 / World Premiere / 21 min.

synopsis

One of the qualities that is most ingrained in Eastern European culture is hospitality. Welcoming the guest, setting the table and making sure they return home full and satisfied. But what if a guest has dropped in uninvited and their hunger cannot be satisfied, no matter how hard we try? Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Tania Licheuskaya has been recording the first events at the Luninets air base in Belarus, and the black soup she cooks for uninvited guests from the neighbouring country becomes a symbol of resistance.

“He breaks into your home without knocking, he is hungry and hopes you will feed him. He has always been hungry, and he likes to expand the boundaries of his appetite. This hunger has a dark history of liberation wars, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations.”

biography

Tania Licheuskaya (1997) is a Belarusian filmmaker and artist. She graduated from the European Humanities University in Vilnius with a Bachelor's degree and is currently pursuing a Master's degree at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Her multimedia work explores the influence of political systems on society and on the human being as an individual.