Living under state censorship and control, Belarusian filmmakers looked for ways to unite for a long time. Unprecedented mass repressions during and after the protests against falsified results of the presidential election in 2020 made the collective solidarity imminent and further convinced us to oppose any form of state collaboration.

The idea of creating an organization was born after the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. More than 130 Belarusian filmmakers signed a collective statement on March 1st condemning Russia's military aggression against Ukraine at that time. Since then, we all continued to face challenges individually and felt that we should unite in solidarity to form a unified front. All this prompted us to create a legal structure that could speak on behalf of independent Belarusian filmmakers with one voice.