"We were ultimately prohibited from filming in Russia under various pretexts -- politics, the coronavirus, and so on," he said.

The crew ended up moving the project to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, parts of which had Soviet-era buildings that resembled those that dominate the outskirts of Minsk.

The trailer for the movie, which was released in July and has close to 400,000 views on YouTube, is a high-octane clip that begins with romantic scenes from the couple's quiet life in Minsk, and quickly unravels into shaky video footage of police beatings and torture.

Guts says many of the scenes were reconstructed from videos posted online last summer by protesters and citizen journalists, and the comments beneath the trailer suggest that he's been successful in capturing the atmosphere of those tense days in Belarus.

"I could never have imagined how people who survived war felt when they watched films about war," one user, Sergei Vasilyev, wrote. "Now, it seems, I understand it a bit."

'Hell All Over Again'

"The trailer alone leaves me feeling funny," wrote Ilya Gubin. "I'm afraid I won't be able to watch this movie, because I don't want to absorb that hell all over again."

Guts said it was emotionally the hardest project he's undertaken. To create a realistic atmosphere redolent of the conditions faced by protesters arrested by the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and claimed a landslide victory in the election a year ago, Guts says he "morally humiliated" his actors in various ways to elicit anger and emotion.

"After every take, all the actors, [camera] operators, the producer and the director, everyone hugged," he said. "Because without affection and intimacy it was hard to endure."

Guts said he decided to make the film almost as soon as the protests began following the election. He said he learned that a friend of his had been raped by police officers, and that another friend was arrested while he was walking to a fruit market with his son.

"All of this built up inside of me and I immediately decided that I would make a film whatever happens," he said. "I'm not a politician, revolutionary, or journalist. I'm a filmmaker, and that's all I can do to help my friends in Belarus."

He said that, despite the report of Russia's decision to ban the film, he will be applying for a distribution license from the country's Culture Ministry, and has at least one distributor lined up and willing to show the film if the license is granted.

"The film's not yet ready, no one's yet seen it, the sound is still being edited," he said. "But they've already banned it."