Time seems to have come to a standstill in this tiny Belarusian village. In a house off the beaten track, a feeble old woman takes care of her daughter—who has been paralyzed since birth—all on her own. She can’t count on state support, and her grandchildren rarely visit. Tania, trapped inside the shell of her body and completely reliant on her mother, finds comfort by creating extremely moving poems and drawings. Who better to understand what loneliness is, what it means to long for physical and spiritual intimacy? Andrei Kutsila, one of Belarus’s most talented documentary filmmakers, beautifully tells a story of boundless love, loneliness, and the pain of existence that both protagonists have to face.

Zuzanna Połynko