Letters From the Silenced Country wins Golden Globes impact prize at Venice
Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila's Letters From the Silenced Country has won the Golden Globes Impact Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival.
The award, presented in partnership with the Artemis Rising Foundation, was reported by Variety on 12 September 2026. That date coincided with the close of the festival's 83rd edition, which ran from 2 to 12 September.
The film portrays contemporary Belarus through five people whose lives were upended by state violence and political repression. It premiered out of competition at Venice. That means it screened in the official programme but outside the main race for the Golden Lion.
It is built around personal letters written from prison, from exile and from underground life. The storytelling combines observational documentary with archival footage and animation. That animation is based on drawings created in confinement, when cameras could not record what was happening.
The Impact Prize honours a documentary filmmaker with a feature in the Venice official selection that addresses a key social issue with journalistic and creative skill. It is presented as a collateral award. In Venice language, that is a side prize organised alongside the festival's official jury awards, not one of the main competition prizes.
The 2026 jury comprised actor Liza Soberano, Golden Globes president Helen Hoehne, and producers Regina K. Scully, Geralyn White Dreyfous and Danielle Turkov Wilson. The prize is juried, decided by deliberation rather than audience vote. It carries $10,000 in cash from the Artemis Rising Foundation.
What makes this stand out in the programme is the way the materials fit together. Letters provide the structure. Observation and archive place those voices in daily life. Drawings supply images from cells and hiding places where filming was impossible.
The Biennale lists the winning title as Listy (Letters from the Silenced Country), according to La Biennale. It placed the film in Venice Open – Out of Competition in 2026. This is the second year in a row the Golden Globes has presented the Impact Prize for Documentary at Venice.
Sales company Filmotor boarded the film ahead of its Venice premiere to handle international sales, Variety reported in August. That deal covers sales to buyers and distributors outside the film's home territories.
The Venice prize has a sister award at Cannes. Earlier this year filmmakers Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Tickell jointly received the Golden Globes documentary prize awarded with the same foundation. The two festival prizes form a year-round strand for non-fiction work supported by the Golden Globes and Artemis Rising.
