Andrei Kureichik

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Andrei Kureichik (1980) is a prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, director and publicist from Minsk, Belarus, currently living in exile. He has written and/or directed 27 feature films, as well as over 20 plays that have been staged in 37 countries worldwide.

Kureichik is a founding member of the Coordination Council of Belarus (CCB), alongside notable figures such as Belarusian President-Elect Svetlana Tikhanouskaya and Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich. The CCB was established to ensure the democratic transfer of power in the wake of the contested 2020 presidential election in Belarus, in which autocratic president Alexander Lukashenko refused to concede. During the brutal crackdown that ensued, members of the CCB were arrested or forced into exile as Lukashenko violently clung to power. Since then, Kureichik and his family have had to relocate first to Slovakia and then, with the support of Artists at Risk (AR), to Finland.

Kureichik has won several prestigious awards, including the Russian Ministry of Culture Award for Best Modern Play for Piedmont Beast (2002), the Belarusian Ministry of Culture Award for Best Modern Play for Old Senor (2003), a Special Jury Prize from the Russian Professional Film Production Award SHOT! for Above the Sky (2012), a Special Award for Cinematic Versatility at the XVIII Open Russian Comedy Film Festival Smile, Russia! for PARTY-ZAN (2017), and the Best Director Award at the XII International Festival MILK in Odessa, Ukraine for Insulted. Russia (2019).

As a member of the CCB, Kureichik was also a co-recipient of the European Parliament’s 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the EU’s highest award for human rights work.

Beyond his work on stage and on screen, Kureichik has lectured widely on film and theatre at a number of prominent institutions, including the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, the European Humanities University, the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, the Council of Europe School, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Leeds and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. In Finland, Kureichik will be introduced to leading figures in the world of film and theatre. Preliminary plans include lectures in the department of Film, Television and Scenography at Aalto University.

Andrei Kureichik is an AR-ENSH Resident at Artists at Risk (AR)-Safe Haven Helsinki. The programme is co-funded by the City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division and the Creative Europe Programme of European Union, curated by Perpetuum Mobile (PM) as part of Artists at Risk – A European Network of Safe Havens (AR-ENSH). The AR-Network is coordinated by the AR-Secretariat with support from the Swedish Arts Council and Kone Foundation and curated by Perpetuum Mobile (PM).