Viktar Dashuk's shocking and compelling film examines the origins of oppression in contemporary Belarus. Viktar Dashuk, who works under constant surveillance, in a country where dissenting journalists and politicians have been kidnapped and killed, calls the political events in his country “Belarusian absurd theatre”. Dashuk shows how president Lukashenko managed to bring the legal system and, step by step, the whole state under his exclusive control. Describing his country as a dictatorship where Themis, goddess of justice and morality, has degenerated into a lady of easy virtue seeking her own self-interest, Dashuk uses damning evidence-show trials against the innocent, the disappearance and destruction of political opponents, the use of brute violence against anyone that opposes the ruling powers-to draw a direct line from the methods of Stalin to the rule of Lukashenko. Dashuk, who studied with Tarkovsky, working with symbols or allegories, like a prisoner’s tattoos or the story of a serial killer. A depressing report from the heart of darkness and a great political essay

Victar Dashuk was born in 1938. After finishing his studies in journalism at the Belorussian State University, he studied scriptwriting and direction in Moscow under the supervision of Andrej Tarkowskij. Today Viktar Dashuk is living and working in Belorusia. Because of his films he is also faced with repressions of the Lukashenko regime.

Viktar Dashuk’s Themis As a Lady of Loose Morals was the most important political documentary seen at Leipzig 2008 and was awarded the ver.di (Media Trade Union) Prize.