Aliaksei Paluyan was born 1989 in Belarus. In 2012 he moved to Germany and studied film and television directing at the Kunsthochschule Kassel (Academy for the Arts). In 2019, his short fiction drama Lake of Happiness, a German-Belarusian-Spainish co-production, premiered in Clermont-Ferrand, won numerous awards at international festivals, was a candidate for European Short Film Award at the 33rd European Film Awards in 2020 and also longlisted for the Oscars 2021. Courage is his documentary film debut.