Oscars: Belarus Selects ‘Crystal Swan’ as its Academy Awards Entry (EXCLUSIVE)

East European nation Belarus has selected Darya Zhuk’s debut feature “Crystal Swan” as its submission for the Oscars’ foreign-language film category, the first country to do so for the 91st Academy Awards race. It is the first time Belarus has entered a film in the Oscars contest for 22 years. The film, about a young female DJ, has its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Saturday.

Set in 1996, the movie centers on Velya, a young woman living in Minsk, who loves House Music and dreams of moving to the U.S. to work as a professional DJ. Getting a visa proves tough though, and her quest to provide a phoney verification for the faked documents she needs for the visa application leads to a trip to a grim back-water town, where the locals are hostile toward this non-conformist free-spirit.

“I wanted to make something about my generation of Belarusians,” Zhuk told Variety. “I feel like in the 1990s we all had this dream of going places and it was an important time for us.”

The film, which opens Karlovy Vary’s East of the West competition section, stars Alina Nasibullina as Velya. Nasibullina previously appeared in “How Victor the Garlic Took Alexei the Stud to the Nursing Home,” which won the East of the West competition in Karlovy Vary last year.

Helga Landauer co-wrote the script with Zhuk, who is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in directing. The film is produced by Demarsh Film, with Vice Media among the co-producers, and was supported by grants from New York State Council for the Arts, Hessen Film Fund in Germany, and Tribeca Film Institute. Laurent Danielou at Loco Films is handling world sales.

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