Within two weeks of David France reading an article in The New Yorker about the persecution of LGBTQ people in Chechnya, he was on a plane headed to Moscow. 2022 International Documentary Association. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. Another of these young people tries to slit their wrists. But I found it remarkably effective in the way it lets these young men and women tell their stories and express a level of emotion that would have been lost if they had been filmed with blurred faces or in heavy shadows. [1] The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists. And what they had put together was a search and rescue operation, like something that you would imagine in a World War II movie. Saudi jihadist Ibn al-Khattab staged a devastating ambush of a Russian convoy at Shatoy on April 16 that prompted the . Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger 7. Interspersing the film we saw snatches of video (shot by the perpetrators, intercepted by activists) that showed just that happening, a gay purge being carried out in horrifically vivid detail. The target is Anya (a pseudonym), whose plight is revealed at the films start: Pleading for help in a phone call to Russian LGBT Network crisis response coordinator David Isteev, she explains that her uncle is threatening to reveal her lesbianism to her fathera high-ranking government officialunless she has sex with him. 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HBO Max Thank you! 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. Welcome to Chechnya (HBO): An inside look at a group of activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ campaign in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Uno de los casos que sigue el documental es el de "Anya", una joven pidiendo ayuda despus de que su to descubre su identidad homosexual. This is nonsense, he says. After some chitchat, the women leave by taxi for the airport. Posted on 21 de fevereiro de 2022 by . This fear is not abstract. On March 1, Ukrainian Armed Forces wrote on Twitter that Magomed Tushayev, a pro-Putin Chechen general who led the gay purge in Chechnya, was killed in Ukraine. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize, David Isteev, Olga Baranova, Maxim Lapunov, Panorama Publikumspreis (audience award) for Best Documentary, Ryan Laney, Eugen Brunig, Maxwell Anderson, Johnny Han and Piers Dennis, David France, Alice Henty, Askold Kurov and Joy A Tomchin, Best Broadcast Network or Cable Docuseries, Documentary Television Movie, or Non-Fiction Series, Alice Henty, David France, Joy A. Tomchin, Askold Kurov and Igor Myakotin, The Most Valuable Documentary of the Year, This page was last edited on 9 January 2023, at 01:52. I was told that Maxim had agreed, even on the first conversation, to allow me to film him and that he was a charismatic character, a person who is an entertainer, France said. Its a matter of trusting the process.. Instead, we see David and a team of associates covertly enter Grozny with a carefully crafted plan to extract desperate subjects - in this case, "Anya", the twenty-one year old daughter of a local government official who is being blackmailed by her uncle, threatening to expose her sexuality if she doesn't allow him to rape her. To make matters worse, the GoPro screen would power off after one minute. Their operation, run from a discreet location that becomes a haven for escapees-in-wait, receives about 25 new refugees a month. It was very cumbersome, but necessary to keep my end of the promise, France said. But the greater part of the action of Welcome to Chechnya was caught on the move, with a disturbingly convincing tension, as the film followed various strands as they developed, unpredictably, in real time (its a considerable achievement, not least in editing, to make such an approach convincing rather than contrived). That tell is important, Laney said. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. Chechnya, also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, republic in southwestern Russia, situated on the northern flank of the Greater Caucasus range. Everybody understood that this needed to be exposed, France said. He had seen television news interviews from the Russian, largely Muslim republic: the subjects were dimmed in shadows, their voices digitally altered, but he found it hard to connect with them. They thought I was some sort of crazy nut.. A lavalier mic (considered professional gear, thus suspect) was used when safely inside the shelter. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. Chechen forces successfully raided Russian-held Grozny for weapons in March. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. So I decided to lay low., Its not gone well for Anya. Welcome To Chechnya (2020): Official Trailer | HBO. [1] The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists.[1]. Its not a story about me, France says simply. Chechnya's . Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. What I learned from that story in The New Yorker was that the crimes that had been exposed earlier in the year hadnt stopped, that nothing about the exposure in the world media, nothing about the expressions of outrage from European leaders, nothing about the meek, near silence from the Trump administration had done anything to slow the campaign that was being carried out by the leadership in Chechnya against the LGBTQ community, France tells Variety. Like all great political documentaries, Welcome to Chechnya is a call to action. (Pavel Golovkin | AP file photo) Chechen regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov smiles prior to President Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 1, 2016. Youre forced to reckon with the nature of identityhow it can cost someone their life. IE 11 is not supported. The activists are sure to remind us that this violence affects more than just cisgender gay men; the regime is equally perilous for cis women and trans people, though these other stories dont seem to travel nearly as far. Thanks to the extraordinary access attained by France and company, were provided passenger seat views of daring midnight escapes and hair-raising trips through customs, with a percolating electronic score out of a Michael Mann picture. So theres a lot of work to be done.. One of the most powerful moments in the documentary, "Welcome to Chechnya," premiering June 30 at 10:00 pm on HBO, has a young gay man recalling his arrest and torture. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. He embedded himself with Isteev and another activist, Olga Baranova, and began filming some of the young people who turned to them for help. Welcome to Chechnya pays important tribute to the courage of its subjects, including activists like Isteev and Baranova, who risk their own persecution and exposure. For securitys sake, Ivanova needed to use a burner phone rather than her own. Since 2016, Chechnya's tyrannical leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has waged a depraved operation to "cleanse the blood" of LGBTQ+ Searing urgency is a guiding force as Welcome . Welcome to Chechnya is likely to be the most urgent documentary of the year, but makes many exploitative missteps along the way. He was tortured and forced to name those men, who were then also arrested, tortured and forced to name others, setting off a horrific chain reaction. For most of the 100 minutes that followed, Isteev seemed to be in much the same position, trying to juggle the fates of those who had ended up under his protection as he attempted to spirit them to safety. But as the movie tells us upfront, France took an extraordinary step to protect their identities further, using sophisticated facial-disguise technology. France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. Oscar; Crticas; . France wanted to put a real human face on the story, so conventional techniques of disguising one's appearance, such as blurring their faces, filming them in darkness or hiring actors to stage re-enactments were not enough. Shooting Scenarios is a new column that takes a single scene and breaks it down cinematographically, looking at shooting logistics, creative challenges, and camera gear deployed. 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. Finding the right word to describe Welcome to Chechnya isnt easy. Chechnya's been especially . And it restores to them their humanity in a way that would not have been possible under other circumstances., Still, why should we trust a documentary that uses deepfakes? Activist David Isteev, left, and a cohort organize an escape in a scene from 'Welcome to Chechnya.'. And yet, here is proof., France spent about 18 months filming in Moscow and Chechnya. [3] The approach is a "game changer in identity protection," according to Documentary Magazine, and a brand new tool for documentary filmmakers. 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. Their identities are protected via a new form of digital masking, which similar to deepfake technology overlays the faces of others while preserving the camera subjects original expressions. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. "[12] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[13]. They talk about their injuries and show us bruises that havent yet healed. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. (The Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) It comes midway through the HBO documentary that premieres June 30, so weve already met the Russian LGBT activists who help Chechen gays and lesbians flee the republics anti-gay purge. But I knew I wanted to tell a much more in-depth story about what something as hideous as this meant to the people who survived it.. All Rights Reserved. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The unrelated subjects were mostly queer activists in New York who I found on Instagram and elsewhere, France said. There is, for example, the case of a woman they call Anya, whose father is a high-ranking official in Chechnya and whose uncle has threatened to tell her father about her sexualitya death sentenceunless she sleeps with him. The story that it followed had started back in 2017, with a crack-down by the authorities in the southern republic of Chechnya that saw widespread police torture of gay men; in a society where concepts of family shame and honour killing remain absolutely real, victims were then handed over to their families, most probably to be murdered by them, the same fate awaiting women as well. And this changes nothing. So there was always this dark shadow of the violence that hung over every moment of the time that I was with them.. They are tough. 21 . 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. Instead, they deployed Frances iPhone X and a GoPro Hero6. And as in Frances first film, the people most in desperate need of help have once again been abandoned to their own devices. The film follows the work of activists rescuing survivors of torture in Chechnya. Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian government has shut down . Certain hyped-up scenes, with their insistent music and TV expose vibe, fall flat precisely because they add an energy that this situation, an outright tragedy, shouldnt need in order to make its point. Plans start at $9.99/month. I love her. David France's daring documentary "Welcome to Chechnya" goes undercover to detail the actions of activists in response to the Chechen Republic's anti-gay purge. She was being blackmailed by an uncle who discovered she is a lesbian . He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. I tried to install the app, and it didnt work. That meant Ivanova was sneaking peeks or shooting blind throughout the operation. I want people to be invested in it. Members of the LGBTQ+ community are being systematically hunted, detained, tortured, and executed by Chechen authorities, civilians, and their own family members. Read that word, and digest what it means. . On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. This happened shortly after Frontal journalists published their investigation Forced Adoption: The Missing Children of Kherson on the social network. So I became a selfie queen, says France. There's no time for sweeping shots of foreign. It was released on June 30, 2020 by HBO Films. 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. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. Where photography is strictly forbidden is at passport control. from Anya, a 21-year-old threatened by her uncle to have intercourse with him, or he'll reveal her homosexuality to her father, a high-ranking official . At the airport, photography is not allowed, though authorities tolerate selfies. Filmmaker David France goes inside what can only be called a genocide that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has unleashed against his LGBTQ citizens. Anya's story is one of the main threads. Anya decides to escape, but that isn't so easy with the authorities soon hot on her trail. All rights reserved. Grisha was allowed out of prison because, apparently, hes from Siberia but the Chechen authorities later decided theyd made a mistake by letting a witness get away. 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? The false face morphs into the real face of Maxim Lapunov, who later appeared with France and two members of the Russian rescue operation, Olga Baranova and David Isteev, at the Sundance premiere to a thunderous standing ovation. Nichols said he was won over by Frances film. And also to support Maxim Lapunov and his family in their lawsuit. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. Simply enter your email address in the box below, Joy of reunion: a happier moment in 'Welcome to Chechnya', Since propaganda of gay relationships was criminalised there in 2013, such anti-, The greater part of the action was caught on the move, with a disturbingly convincing tension. 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. Two of these operations frame the narrative of Welcome to Chechnya: the exfiltration of a 21-year-old woman with the pseudonym Anya, whose uncle learned she is lesbian and threatened to expose her . June 30, 2020. They have . 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. I was so involved in the technical work for the months leading up to Sundance that I hadnt stepped back to see the film. David France, left, and the face-capture producer Johnny Han watch a volunteer in the studio. Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. HBO. People and footage had to be protected at all costs. Documentarian David France faced an unenviable challenge with his latest film, "Welcome to Chechnya.". The journalist and filmmaker David France was first alerted to this crisis by Masha Gessen's 2017 New Yorker article and decided to make it the subject of his next film. Since the films Sundance premiere Ive seen a few folks take exception to the slickness with which France and editor Tyler H. 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