4,370 followers. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? The darkness was painfully visible throughout Welcome to Chechnya, but France somehow managed to close the film in light a beam, however tentative and hesitant, that nevertheless shone through with affirmation. People there are killed and tortured for being gay, as described in scary detail within the film. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. '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. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. A gripping account of ACT UP and TAGs extraordinary lifesaving efforts during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the film chronicled a community left to fend for itself in the face of mass medical negligence and societal indifference. 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. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. These are ghastly images, and I'm not convinced the film needed all of them to convey the full horror of what's going on. 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. One in particular sticks with me: a pop singer named Zelim Bakaev, who disappeared in 2017 and is thought to been captured, tortured, and murdered after attending his sisters wedding. And that hasnt changed since the documentary was completed. I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, France said. 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. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. In case we got caught, thats what wed say we were. When in public, Kurov would frame picture and control settings remotely, using a smartphone app. 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. They thought I was some sort of crazy nut.. "We don't have such people here," declares Ramzan Kadyrov, chuckling . Its got a beautiful lens on it, says the director, but it looks like a toy. 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. Since 2016, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has led a pogrom against the . Anya, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Chechen government and extensive resources to track her down, is deposited into an apartment at an undisclosed location in Eurasia. When he was captured on the streets of Grozny, he had been selling balloon art. Fortunately, the brave Grisha has the support of his immediate family, who decide to move with him; as his mother notes in one poignant scene, her loyalty is to her family not to an oppressive government. Some strange people came to my flat and spoke with my mom. Welcome to Chechnya airs on HBO Tuesday, June 30, at 10 p.m. Sean Burns Twitter Film CriticSean Burns is a film critic for The ARTery. We have group therapy sessions about it to process the work that we had gone through.. 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. [5], One of the refugees, Maxim Lapunov, is publicly identified in the film, as he sought, and failed, to get legal redress from Russian authorities.[6]. The unrelated subjects were mostly queer activists in New York who I found on Instagram and elsewhere, France said. From the start, a disclaimer states that certain subjects have been digitally disguised for their safety. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. The people chronicled in Frances film have pictures on their phones documenting the torture they suffered, some of which we see. And I understood, of course.. And my task was to convince them to let me shoot their faces and explore their journey, with a promise that I would find a way to disguise them.. The film splits focus between her story and that of Grisha, a torture victim and Russian national who after much deliberation decides to come forward and file a criminal complaint, hoping to expose these atrocities on the world stage. And what they had put together was a search and rescue operation, like something that you would imagine in a World War II movie. Finding the right word to describe Welcome to Chechnya isnt easy. 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. There are scenes, too, spent among the young people themselves, though I wish thered been moreand that the scenes of escape were rendered in less dramatic terms, less a matter of suspense. France, a former Newsweek editor turned filmmaker (How to Survive a Plague, 2012), bristles at the term, a portmanteau of computer-assisted deep learning and fake., Deepfake changes what people say and do, France said. 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. And it still is. 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. Si su padre, miembro del gobierno checheno . 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. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. This documentary, which airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HBO, shows us what's happening to gay people in that Russian republic and the rest of the Russian Federation and it's deeply . Disgraceful. By Neetha K Published on : 18:00 PST, Jun 30, 2020 . Quite popular in Russia, GoPro is a camera everybody can have, with no questions asked, Ivanova says. I think the point's been made and now it's time to take . Afterwards, the activists reunite at a meeting spot, where the women change clothes and Anyas phone is destroyed. On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. Welcome to Chechnya follows the stories of some of the gay men and women attempting to move to safety. She has never been at home alone before but must wait indoors, as the activists try to arrange for any country to take her in. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. I love her. And the world lets them get away with iteven despite documentaries like this. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. According to Representative Billy Long, abortions, not guns, are the problem. Horrific. Distressing. And also to support Maxim Lapunov and his family in their lawsuit. The movie opens on a dark street in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, where a man smokes a cigarette and arranges secret meetings and transports by phone. The most nerve-wracking sequence in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. At the airport, photography is not allowed, though authorities tolerate selfies. This fear is not abstract. Im still in contact with all those people. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. 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. Without them, you could be considered a spy and spend many years in prison. Posted on 21 de fevereiro de 2022 by . In the Russian republic of Chechnya, the gay community has been hunted. HBO's chilling "Welcome to Chechnya" depicts the heroism of ordinary people caught in an LGBTQ purge Director David France's riveting documentary never feels safe as he illuminates a world of. Instead, they edited the film in a windowless room in order to keep with security protocols. Sometimes thats a tall order. But France has some hope that Putin can be pressured to rein in Kadyrov and stop him and the others who, under his authority, are carrying out these atrocities. If European countries were united as a single voice on LGBTQ issues, he said, that could happen. A lavalier mic (considered professional gear, thus suspect) was used when safely inside the shelter. And then theres Maxim Lapunov, who came to Moscow after being released from prison, where he was tortured for several weeks in 2017. And that included extreme security protocols while filming in Chechnya encrypting the footage and smuggling it out of the country. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. It comes midway through the HBO documentary that premieres June 30, so we've already met the Russian LGBT activists who help Chechen gays and lesbians flee the republic's anti-gay purge. D. Fox Harrell, professor of digital media and artificial intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there was an educational potential in synthetic media, the term he prefers to deepfake redeeming it from mere deception. Many who survived imprisonment have fled to Moscow, where they live in a safe house while seeking political asylum in other countries. People and footage had to be protected at all costs. Director David Frances 2012 How to Survive a Plague was to my mind one of the decades finest documentaries. Welcome to Chechnya: Directed by David France. "Welcome to Chechnya" es un urgente documental que destaca a valientes activistas rescatando a personas gay del exterminio en Chechenia. 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. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. Thanks to a toxic brew of nationalistic fervor, Putins gay propaganda law and some good old-fashioned religious fundamentalism, homosexuals have been scapegoated as disgraces only blood can cleanse, in many cases becoming victims of honor-killings by their own families. 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. To remain inconspicuous, only amateur camera gear was used on the film. Want to get a head start on your Oscar predictions? War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Before Anya even set foot in the restaurant, Ivanova got a warning scrawled on a napkin. And they signed on as an act of activism.. His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to 'cleanse' the republic. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Anya decides to escape, but that isn't so easy with the authorities soon hot on her trail. After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. On location, the team followed strict protocols with footage. His bigoted policies and authoritarian behavior make him just as bad a pick for the top job in Washington. They have grim stories: of being captured by police, of getting questioned over their phone contacts, of being driven to those contacts homes and forced to aid the police in their respective capture. Chechnya is bordered by Russia proper on the north, Dagestan republic on the east and southeast, the country of Georgia on the southwest, and Ingushetiya republic on the west. . Tushayev was responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering LGBTQ+ people. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? In 2017, the Russian republic of Chechnya began what some news outlets have dubbed the gay purge, rounding up and torturing LGBTQ+ citizens at secret black sites. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. Welcome to Chechnya (2020) Plot Showing all 3 items Jump to: Summaries (2) Synopsis (1) Summaries A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya. Frances movie is very much an on-the-ground account of these happenings. The camerawork is rough and ragged; the sense of menace is palpable. 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. 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. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. I appeared to be smiling at my own image while actually grabbing shots over his shoulder. So theres a lot of work to be done.. He wants you to see them. A guide to the hidden references in this buzzy anthologys new episodes, from first-season callbacks to what, Monica Lewinskys Verdict on the Johnny DeppAmber Heard Trial: We Are All Guilty. Hearing the victims recount their stories is devastating. Amid safety concerns, and anxiety over the fate of a $200 million movie, Where to Watch the Biggest 2023 Awards Contenders. Instead of masking or blurring their faces, theyre replaced digitally with a different face but the replacement images carry all the emotion of the victims. But as the movie tells us upfront, France took an extraordinary step to protect their identities further, using sophisticated facial-disguise technology. Movie. 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. T he anti-gay purge in Chechnya began in 2017. France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. All rights reserved. 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). And then to see it with an audience and to be able to introduce the people who were in the film to that audience it was a very gratifying experience.. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. Chechnya's been especially . Their cover story is that Anya is meeting two family friends who are taking her dress-shopping. The film follows the work of activists rescuing survivors of torture in Chechnya. None of that is included in the film. Read that word, and digest what it means. 2022 International Documentary Association. Together with various support initiatives, they had come to oversee a network that had arisen almost spontaneously back in 2017 to respond to what was happening in Chechnya. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous region of Russia, enacted a campaign in 2017 to find, imprison, torture and sometimes kill LGBTQ Chechens. IE 11 is not supported. And yet, here is proof., France spent about 18 months filming in Moscow and Chechnya. With Olga Baranova, David Isteev, Ramzan Kadyrov, Maxim Lapunov. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Thank you! Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story. 10 Chechen gays get tortured and the whole world cares. "[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]. It's a bold gambit that may put off those who find it too duplicitous in the context of a documentary. (The films cinematographer, Askold Kurov, stepped aside for this mission since its cover story required a female camera operator.). 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. So there was always this dark shadow of the violence that hung over every moment of the time that I was with them.. 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. Anya's story is one of the main threads. 2020 documentary about the anti-LGBT purges in Chechnya, facial replacement techniques using artificial intelligence, Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, Outstanding Directional Achievement in Documentary, Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, "HBO Documentary Films Lands Sundance-Bound Welcome To Chechnya, About Harsh Plight Of LGBTQ Community In Russian Republic", "How Hidden Cameras Captured a Daring Rescue in 'Welcome to Chechnya'", "Sundance 2020: How VFX Pulled Welcome to Chechnya Out of the Shadows Exclusive", 'It Only Ends When They're Dead.' The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), also colloquially known as the Television Academy, is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the television industry in the United States.It is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization founded in 1946, the organization presents the Primetime Emmy Awards, an annual ceremony honoring achievement in U.S. primetime television. Although some didnt. France doesnt see it as opening a new can of worms so much as the same old one. Isteev was the aptly titled crisis intervention coordinator for Russias largest gay rights group, The Russian LGBT Network, Baranova the director of the Moscow-based Community Center for LGBTI+ Initiatives. Amid safety concerns, and anxiety over the fate of a $ million... Help matters the identities of interviewees: 18:00 PST, Jun 30, 2020 a warning scrawled a! An on-the-ground account of these happenings quarantine in a windowless room in order to keep with security protocols hope. 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