Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus

Last updated
Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus
Directed by Madeleine Sackler
Distributed by HBO
Release date
  • 2013 (2013)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Madeleine Sackler detailing the experiences of the illicit Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) during the political revolution of independence. [1] The film's footage from Belarus was smuggled out by the camerawomen in Belarus. [2] Other scenes were filmed in the United States and the United Kingdom, including uncensored interviews with BFT actors. [3] [4]

Contents

The film documents the personal and artistic struggles of several members of the BFT, showing the high costs they are forced to pay when defying the governing regime. [5] It also documents one of the presidential candidates, Andrei Sannikov, who was arrested by the KGB following his presidential run.

Cast

Source: [6]

Awards

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won many awards at several film festivals, including the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, where the film was a "Top Twenty Audience Favorite." The film received second prize at the TRT Documentary Awards, and a 2015 Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming in the News and Documentary category. [7]

Reception

Reviewers called the film "engrossing" [8] and "powerful and stirring". [9] It retains a 91% Rotten Tomatoes score. "Not only is it moving to watch these artists express their rage and frustration and tell the stories of their lives, but their urgency and compulsion to perform against all odds feeds their art. It's damned compelling." [10]

The final scenes of the movie are a collection of supportive endorsements for BFT from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Jude Law and the late Czech playwright-president Vaclav Havel. The film was picked up by HBO. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Cattrall</span> British-Canadian actress (born 1956)

Kim Victoria Cattrall is a British and Canadian actress. She is known for her portrayal of Samantha Jones on HBO's Sex and the City (1998–2004), for which she received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She reprised the role in the feature films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), as well as in a cameo on the spin-off series And Just Like That... (2023).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Shenkman</span> American actor

Benjamin Shenkman is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the comedy-drama series Royal Pains and the acclaimed HBO miniseries Angels in America, which earned him both Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.

Moisés Kaufman is a Venezuelan theater director, filmmaker, playwright, founder of Tectonic Theater Project, based in New York City, and co-founder of Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre. He was awarded the 2016 National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He is best known for creating The Laramie Project (2000) with other members of Tectonic Theater Project. He has directed extensively on Broadway and Internationally, and is the author of numerous plays, including Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and 33 Variations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Zimbalist</span> American filmmaker

Jeffrey Leib Nettler Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He has been Academy Award shortlisted, has won a Peabody, a DuPont, and 3 Emmy Awards, with 16 Emmy nominations. He is the owner of film and television production company All Rise Films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Marc Vallée</span> Canadian filmmaker (1963–2021)

Jean-Marc Vallée was a Canadian filmmaker, film editor, and screenwriter. After studying film at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Vallée went on to make a number of critically acclaimed short films, including Stéréotypes (1991), Les Fleurs magiques (1995), and Les Mots magiques (1998).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belarus Free Theatre</span> Belarusian underground theatre group

The Belarus Free Theatre is a Belarusian underground theatre group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoe Kazan</span> American actress (born 1983)

Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress, playwright, and screenwriter. She made her acting debut in the film Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later acted in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Ruby Sparks (2012), What If (2013), The Big Sick (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and She Said (2022). She also wrote Ruby Sparks and co-wrote Wildlife (2018) with her partner Paul Dano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liz Garbus</span> American film director and producer

Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrei Sannikov</span> Belarusian pro-democracy activist

Andrei Olegovich Sannikov is a Belarusian politician and activist. In the early 1990s, he headed the Belarusian delegation on Nuclear and Conventional Weapons Armament Negotiations, also serving as a Belarusian diplomat to Switzerland. From 1995 to 1996, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus, resigning as a form of political protest. He co-founded the civil action Charter 97, and was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize in 2005.

Daniel Junge is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film Saving Face, which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Lydia Dean Pilcher is an American film and television producer and director and founder of Cine Mosaic, a production company based in New York City.

<i>Casting By</i> 2012 American film

Casting By is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Tom Donahue. It combines over 230 interviews, extensive archival footage, animated stills and documents to tell the untold tale of the Hollywood casting director, Marion Dougherty. Dougherty died before the film's release; it is dedicated to her memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Donahue (filmmaker)</span> American film director and producer

Tom Donahue is an American film director, producer, and co-showrunner. His work as writer, director, and showrunner includes the Paramount Plus Original docuseries Murder of God's Banker and the upcoming six-part docuseries Mafia Spies, based on the 2019 book by Thomas Maier about the CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Fidel Castro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kris Bowers</span> American composer and pianist

Kristopher Bowers is an American composer, pianist and documentary director. He has composed scores for films, including Green Book, King Richard, and The Color Purple, and television series, among them Bridgerton, Mrs. America, Dear White People, and When They See Us.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Heineman</span> American documentary filmmaker

Matthew Heineman is an American documentary filmmaker, director, and producer. His inspiration and fascination with American history led him to early success with the documentary film Cartel Land, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Weinrib</span> Producer

Eric Weinrib is a filmmaker and TV producer from Plainview, New York, United States.

Madeleine Sackler is an American filmmaker, heiress, and member of the Sackler family. She received an Emmy in 2015 and was nominated for a second one in 2020. Her grandfather, Raymond, was one of the three Sackler brothers who created and owned Purdue Pharma, infamous for its role in the Opioid epidemic. She has received criticism for her family fortune, which derives mostly from the sale and manufacture of the highly addictive pharmaceutical opioid Oxycontin, the central drug in the opioid crisis.

Karim Amer is an Egyptian-American film producer and director. He worked on The Square (2013) and The Great Hack (2019); the former was the first Egyptian film to earn an Academy Award nomination and went on to win three Emmy Awards, while the latter got nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA Award. In 2020, he produced and directed The Vow, an HBO documentary series about the self-improvement group, NXIVM. In 2022, he produced and directed Flight/Risk for Amazon Studios, revolving around whistleblowers at Boeing.

<i>Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street</i> 2021 American documentary film

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Marilyn Agrelo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Zimbalist</span> American filmmaker

Michael Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He is a three-time Emmy Award and a Peabody Awards winner.

References

  1. ↑ Harvey, Dennis (2013-09-19). "Toronto Film Review: 'Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus'". Variety. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  2. ↑ ""Dangerous Acts Starring The Unstable Elements Of Belarus": Review By Jesse Kirkwood". The Theatre Times. 2014-12-08. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  3. ↑ "Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus | Distribution". www2.bfi.org.uk. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  4. ↑ "Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus". Riverfront Times. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  5. ↑ "Review: Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus: 3BOMBS". The Wee Review | Scotland's arts and culture magazine. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  6. ↑ "Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus | Human Rights Watch Film Festival". ff.hrw.org. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  7. ↑ "NATIONAL ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS AND SCIENCES ANNOUNCES WINNERS AT THE 36th ANNUAL NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY® AWARDS | The Emmy Awards - The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences". Archived from the original on 2016-01-31. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  8. ↑ Harvey, Dennis (2013-09-19). "Toronto Film Review: 'Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus'". Variety. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  9. ↑ "Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus review – powerful account of 'Europe's last dictatorship' | Mark Kermode". the Guardian. 2014-03-30. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  10. ↑ Willmore, Alison (2013-09-03). "HBO Nabs TV Rights to 'Lottery' Director's Doc About the Belarus Free Theatre Ahead of Film's Toronto Premiere". IndieWire. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  11. ↑ "Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus: Toronto Review | Hollywood Reporter". www.hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.