'Welcome to Chechnya' Director on Doc's Impact: "It's Engendering a Real Wave of Empathy for LGBTQ Russians" Oscar nominee David France's startling depiction of the courageous effort to save. Anya is just a pseudonym for is one of the many who have fled the Chechen Republic as they faced persecution by the government due to their orientation. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Twitter has blocked the account of the Frontal program, which is aired on the German ZDF TV channel. It's there that he first met the men and women who are featured in his new documentary "Welcome to Chechnya," which premieres Tuesday on HBO. Quite popular in Russia, GoPro is a camera everybody can have, with no questions asked, Ivanova says. Its a huge enterprise but I think it works, he added. While Lapunovs identity is kept secret this way through most of the film, his real face is shown when he goes to court to sue the Russian government for failing to protect him from what his lawyers argue was unlawful arrest, detention, torture and discrimination. To feel the audience responding to his story gave him confidence that the sacrifices that hes made, and hes going through, have a purpose., Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. But the real subject of Frances film was something else, something (perhaps) more surprising, and (definitely) more life-affirming how, even in such bleak circumstances, there were people prepared to do something about what was happening. Another substitute face, this time of Joy A. Tomchin, was also used to disguise one of the Chechens in the film. LDS Church wants to light up a temple in a place that prides itself on dark skies, For husband-and-wife team, this new restaurant is the culmination of a decadeslong dream. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. Post author: Post published: May 11, 2022 Post category: orchard lake united hockey Post comments: famous asian psychologists famous asian psychologists The activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. So she held the GoPro low, shielding it with her other arm, or made sure to tuck it behind a coffee cup. Welcome to Chechnya is a blisteringly painful watch, one that imparts new meaning on the practice of bearing witness. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. It allows us to feel that whammy of: This guy was beaten up and tortured and electrocuted and I am seeing him him being his face bare his soul.. Chechnya's . Filmed between August 2017 and early 2019, "Welcome to Chechnya" focuses on LGBT people forced to flee Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. Which meant, in the cases we saw here, abroad, in which they were assisted by a range of international gay organisations, as well as those embassies in Moscow, Canada clearly prominent among them, that proved receptive. This visual strategy has a curious effect: you look at people without really being able to see them. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks Id filmed. But also, theyre inspiring stories, I think., (How to Survive a Plague is streaming on Amazon Prime; The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is streaming on Netflix.). We get to see victims in lighter moments although those simply underscore the fact that these otherwise average, bright, funny people are living with the threat of torture and death hanging over them. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. Another agonising airport moment came when Grisha flew to lasting safety abroad, accompanied not only by his boyfriend but by his family as well: the threats of the Chechen power structures extended so far in Russia that all concerned were in peril, and so had to be moved. (Photo courtesy of HBO Documentary Films via AP) "Bogdan" and his boyfriend, "Grisha," stress out as they attempt to escape from Russia. The people chronicled in Frances film have pictures on their phones documenting the torture they suffered, some of which we see. To watch Frances latest is to be confronted by the moral dimensions of documentary filmmaking and maybe something deeper, concerning the slippery nature of identity itself. It smiles, it cries in exactly the same way, but it is somebody elses face.. All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. The films production was obviously clandestine, guerilla filmmaking to a tee, with director France and his cinematographer Askold Kurov seeking invisibility as they worked with handheld cameras, and catching what they could on phones when that was the only way to operate. And they purchased one small LED panela Yongnuo YN-160 IIIfor shooting inside dark rooms or cars at night. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous region of Russia, enacted a campaign in 2017 to find, imprison, torture and sometimes kill LGBTQ Chechens. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. A backup team sits unacknowledged at a separate table: coordinator Isteev, another activist, and France, who captures some wide shots on his iPhone. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. One young man is fleeing because while he is not a citizen of Chechnya, he has spent time detained in one of its prisons for being gayand upon his release back to Russia, he became a threat to a regime that would rather the world buy into its denialism. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. Since 2017, Chechnya's tyrannical leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has waged a depraved operation to "cleanse the blood" of LGBTQ Chechens, overseeing a government-directed campaign to detain, torture and execute them. Ad Choices. Its not legal to encrypt in Russia, so we were taking a risk, France notes. (The Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to 'cleanse' the republic. Welcome to Chechnya opened with footage of activist David Isteev (pictured below) waiting anxiously on his phone, listening to 21-year-old Anya the names of all except the activists were changed, their faces and voices disguised from the Chechen capital Grozny, tell how she was being blackmailed by a family member threatening to reveal her sexuality. This is documented by the people who did it themselves, and those same people have denied in public forum that anything like this is happening there. [3] The approach is a "game changer in identity protection," according to Documentary Magazine, and a brand new tool for documentary filmmakers. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. Their storylines are framed by the narrative . The website's critics consensus reads: "An illuminating and urgent call to action, Welcome to Chechnya portrays the horrors of the mass persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in the Chechen Republic with tenacity and tenderness. The story in Chechnya is unfortunately still ongoing. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. By K. Austin Collins June 30, 2020 There's a clip, in David France 's Welcome to Chechnya, of a 2017 interview with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. Shameful. France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. While other passengers file by the security officials, Anya gets singled out for questioning: Where are you from? Whats your purpose of travel? How long will you stay? Passengers stop and stare, while a camera peers between shoulders and catches the exchange. 197 posts. In one video, an incarcerated man is sexually assaulted off-camera by police. The Russian LGBT Network moves her into an apartment where she must hole up for weeks on end, waiting for a travel visa that might never arrive. Immediately, as theyre being slapped awake and their arm bandaged, we hear a reprimand: Dont fucking create problems for us. And: There are other people here besides you.. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. We werent just erasing cards; we were overwriting them to make the data irretrievable. Once the encrypted hard drive arrived in New York, theyd send word back to Russia to overwrite the two remaining drives. In the Russian republic of Chechnya, the gay community has been hunted. Many of the faces we see are actually the faces of people from outside Chechnya, who lent their likenesses to the film. How would he shield the identity of at-risk gay and lesbian Chechens fleeing the region via a network of safe houses, while also preserving their emotions, their affections and expressions? Data was immediately moved off-camera cards and loaded in triplicate onto encrypted drives; one was smuggled out of the country and two remained hidden in Russia. We meet survivors and their family members, including Grisha, who was beaten and tortured for 12 days so badly injured he could only crawl afterward. T he anti-gay purge in Chechnya began in 2017. When transferring data from a card, for instance, that computer would have its Wi-Fi card removed and Bluetooth disabled. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. From acclaimed journalist and Oscar (R)-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague) comes this searing documentary about a group of brave activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ campaign in the Russian republic of Chechnya--which has led to the torture and disappearance of untold numbers of people. El caso central de WELCOME TO CHECHNYA no es el de Anya sino el de Maxim, cuya complicada historia -que incluye a su pareja, familia y varias idas y vueltas- se ir contando a travs del film e incluye muchos elementos dramticos ms. He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. Its practically seamless more convincing than the de-aging in The Irishman, anyway and points to entire new worlds of possibility in documentary footage preserving peoples anonymity. And while there initially isn't much background on the two fugitive subjects the 30-year-old "Grisha" and the 21-year-old Muslim lesbian "Anya" you quickly understand why. Read that word, and digest what it means. His bigoted policies and authoritarian behavior make him just as bad a pick for the top job in Washington. Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. But I also want people to know what the conditions are for LGBTQ people around the globeThere are still 70 countries where its a crime to be queer, and eight of those countries, and several other semi-autonomous regions like Chechnya is, consider it a crime worthy of the death penalty., As international borders are closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the activists in Moscow need even more help. The pre-existing material in "Welcome to Chechnya" is by far its most distressing: grainy cellphone and surveillance camera footage of real-life homophobic attacks in the republic, including a. Theres a clip, in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya, of a 2017 interview with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. Deepfake Technology Enters the Documentary World. 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David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. It was released on June 30, 2020 by HBO Films. Distressing. . One of these digitally altered subjects is a 21-year-old lesbian introduced as "Anya," whose uncle knows her sexual orientation and demands that she sleep with him or risk being outed to her father, a powerful Chechen official. Like most of the victims in Welcome to Chechnya, Grishas identity is hidden with deep fake technology. With no help from the Kremlin and only faint global condemnation, activists take matters into their own hands. Shes just fearless, says France. Welcome to Chechnya is largely procedural, with long scenes detailing the steps it takes to covertly travel from one territory to another, toward safety or something like it. I felt the lack of any sort of safety net, and that was very frightening. But there's no doubting the depth of its fury and anguish on behalf of the victims and survivors we see and the many, many more that we don't. Weve heard historical context, seen horrific trophy videos of assault and murder, and spent time in the secret shelter where queer refugees await visas. This fear is not abstract. Looking for more? Amid safety concerns, and anxiety over the fate of a $200 million movie, Where to Watch the Biggest 2023 Awards Contenders. Its not a story about me, France says simply. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. They were sent over WhatsApp groups up the chain of command, so that Ramzan Kadyrov would know that his orders are being carried out., And when you saw the footage, I realized that I wanted to take that away from them, and turn their trophies into evidence, he continued. Horrific. The mere presence of. According to Representative Billy Long, abortions, not guns, are the problem. Until now, its use has largely been limited to anonymous online mischief of various degrees of severity, like inserting Nicolas Cages grin into movies Cage never acted in. Without that outrage, it will keep going. Summary: Searing urgency is a guiding force as Welcome to Chechnya shadows a group of activists who risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ+ pogrom raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Some of the men were released with the expectation that their own relatives would kill them, since the stigma of homosexuality runs deep in this ultra-conservative, primarily Muslim society. Its a matter of trusting the process.. This technology allowed us to just stretch the facesover the images that I shot in the film. I come from a news background, so I love the idea of making something that really could have happened, said Francesca Panetta, co-director of the video. A Anya la seguiremos en una fuga de pelcula de suspenso y algo similar pasar con otros personajes. Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechnya, initially denied casualties among his fighters, but on February 28 he acknowledged the deaths of two Chechen servicemen, while not giving their names. He was tortured by. He made it his job to bring joy to people. It was Grishas particular situation that brought the film's action into direct contact with officialdom. Moved by the plight of queer people trying to escape government-sanctioned persecution of the Russian state's LGBTQ community, he embedded himself in the rescue efforts to smuggle out refugees to safer corners of the . Whats not obvious in the filmthough not on purposeis that this shot was taken from the backup teams taxi, not Anyas. Help from the Kremlin and only faint global condemnation, activists take matters into their own hands documentary by. Over the fate of a $ 200 million movie, Where to the. 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