Read that word, and digest what it means. 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. I was so involved in the technical work for the months leading up to Sundance that I hadnt stepped back to see the film. This documentary, which airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HBO, shows us whats happening to gay people in that Russian republic and the rest of the Russian Federation and its deeply disturbing. 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. But things got much worse in early 2017, when the leader of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, a strongman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, began a violent purge of anyone suspected of being gay or transgender. All rights reserved. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. Another substitute face, this time of Joy A. Tomchin, was also used to disguise one of the Chechens in the film. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian government has shut down . 197 posts. 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. 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. Follow. This is the kind of film destined to be on "essential" documentary lists for decades to come, the kind we will look back on as critical documentation of a historic wrongdoing. In one video, an incarcerated man is sexually assaulted off-camera by police. We have group therapy sessions about it to process the work that we had gone through.. Afterwards, the cards would be wiped clean. 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. It was a gay purge. Im still in contact with all those people. France included. Afterwards, the activists reunite at a meeting spot, where the women change clothes and Anyas phone is destroyed. Olga Baranova, from left, David Isteev, director David France, and Maxim Lapunov pose for a portrait to promote the film "Welcome to Chechnya" during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 26, 2020. Theres a clip, in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya, of a 2017 interview with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. 2023 Cond Nast. Frances movie, which premieres on HBO Tuesday, is largely focused on a Moscow-based group of activists attempting to help these survivors flee the country. And Im still on it. And as in Frances first film, the people most in desperate need of help have once again been abandoned to their own devices. Nor did the editing and VFX suites in New York. And I understood, of course.. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. 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. Unlike the others, Grisha is unmasked late in the film when he goes before cameras to testify about whats happening in Chechnya. The main location we saw was one of the Moscow safe houses that provided a temporary home for those en route to somewhere else; its routine of wary everyday life, interspersed by periodic departures for the airport, seemed almost normal until painfully broken by a traumatised young man attempting suicide. Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? And they signed on as an act of activism.. Here security guards inspect passports and sharply confer about one. I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, France said. 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. It was my passport they grabbed, and my passport they argued over, says France, who managed to capture this nail-biting episode with an iPhone clutched between his knees. 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. We witnessed Anyas extrication from Chechnya across the mountains, the first step in an evacuation that saw her moved to temporary safety in the hinterland of a neighbouring country (her journey would go no further, not the only example where family coercion or other intervention would prove more powerful than fear). The documentary's use of digital technology to disguise its vulnerable subjects, and hence avoid putting them into an even more dangerous predicament, is surprisingly unobtrusive. That's David Isteev, a journalist turned activist at the start of Welcome to Chechnya, a devastating documentary about the Russian Federation republic's purge of its LGBTQ+ population. 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. So I became a selfie queen, says France. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. During a drug raid, police found suggestive texts and photos on a man's cell phone that led them to believe he identified as gay. Plans start at $9.99/month. 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. So there was always this dark shadow of the violence that hung over every moment of the time that I was with them.. I decided not to use any special equipment or hidden camerasfor example, a camera in your eyeglasses. Many who survived imprisonment have fled to Moscow, where they live in a safe house while seeking political asylum in other countries. 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.). I want them to feel responsible for doing something to help stop it., Donate to the newsroom now. Its access is unprecedented, made possible only by anonymizing the faces of these exiles using deepfake technology that makes them appear just this side of normal. Hearing the victims recount their stories is devastating. Welcome to Chechnya is a terrifying documentary about the gay purges happening in Chechnya, Russia. For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. 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. So theres a lot of work to be done.. 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. Among those in the film are David Isteev, who leads the rescue missions through the Russian LGBT Network and Olga Baranova, director of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. The Montreal Mafia Murders: Blood, Gore, Cannolis, and Hockey Bags, A Comprehensive Guide to Why a Ron DeSantis Presidency Would Be as Terrifying as a Trump One. 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. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. 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. 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. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. 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. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax hide caption. It was my greatest fear: that I could blow up the whole operation. Since the films Sundance premiere Ive seen a few folks take exception to the slickness with which France and editor Tyler H. Walk have given Welcome to Chechnya the lean sizzle of a white-knuckle suspense picture, and I must confess Ive wrestled with whether or not Im trivializing serious subject matter when I tell people I spent most of the movie on the edge of my seat. 21 . Chechen forces successfully raided Russian-held Grozny for weapons in March. It began with a drug raid when police arrested a young man and found sexually explicit images of men on his phone. It was a theory, and then it worked better than we ever expected, Laney said of the painstaking yearlong visual work, which he likened to brush strokes, facial prosthetics and virtual cheek implants. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. He did say they have been concerned about safety at screenings, and that they took special safety precautions at Sundance to protect the people who appear in the film from any undue danger.. (We hear their real voices almost the entire film is subtitled. And in fact, the Russian LGBTQ movement was left all alone to try and fashion some sort of response to what was going on there. I tried to install the app, and it didnt work. That meant Ivanova was sneaking peeks or shooting blind throughout the operation. Director David Frances 2012 How to Survive a Plague was to my mind one of the decades finest documentaries. David Frances revelatory film may have been subtitled The Gay Purge, but from the start it was clear this wasnt just another documentary from Russia charting the increasing pressure faced by that countrys queer community. 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. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks Id filmed. Some strange people came to my flat and spoke with my mom. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. Welcome to Chechnya. Bogdan Left, Grisha Right in "Welcome to Chechnya". He is confronted over the allegation that. Anya's story is one of the main threads. Although some didnt. (The Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) It's a call for justice for the tortured and murdered in Chechnya, and a stark reminder of the realities many. 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 . We were stopped, and because I was an American in this incredibly hermetic part of the world, they pulled me out of the car and brought me in for questioning., When interrogated, France recited his well-rehearsed alibi: I was an insane rich guy who was a rabid fan of the Egyptian football team that had just traveled through Chechnya. Theres been an enormous amount of such spy cases since 2014.. 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. Now, it must bring him down Jonathan Littell Putin believed he could invade Ukraine because everything we failed to do over the last 22 years taught him. Here is an ongoing crime against humanity that has not generated the outrage that it deserves, said France, who earned an Oscar nomination for How to Survive a Plague, his 2012 directing debut about AIDS activists in the early days of the epidemic. 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. With little emotion, the young man explains his scars as his boyfriend touches those spots and says nothing. Those are the stories that have really fascinated me the way that their activists handle these challenges and the specter of death. Sometimes thats a tall order. The face moves exactly the same way. The Trump Family Behaves Exactly How Youd Expect in Documentary Subpoenaed by Jan. 6 Committee. When you have a lack of the actual face, in most cases it will induce a sense of disturbance., But Welcome to Chechnya could represent the introduction of a new kind of soft mask, one that hides a subjects identity while still allowing for a complex emotional attachment. 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? We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. And it still is. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. Saudi jihadist Ibn al-Khattab staged a devastating ambush of a Russian convoy at Shatoy on April 16 that prompted the . Everybody understood that this needed to be exposed, France said. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. All Rights Reserved. France is an award-winning journalist who has been a war correspondent in Central America. 2022 International Documentary Association. Some thought it was too much of a risk. 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. The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. He wants you to see them. And they purchased one small LED panela Yongnuo YN-160 IIIfor shooting inside dark rooms or cars at night. But its much more meaningful. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. 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. This is David Isteev, a crisis intervention coordinator for the Russian LGBT Network, and he spends his days helping gay and transgender Chechens flee a place where they are no longer safe. HBO Max The effect is never quite seamless. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. The Network helps him move to an undisclosed location in Europe with his boyfriend of 10 years. The face of a volunteer, Miguel Grisanti, is used to cloak the real subject in Welcome to Chechnya.. But still these elegantly edited cinematic set-pieces are interrupted by blunt visions of horror trophy videos captured on Chechen citizens cell phones of savage beatings, gang rapes and even a stoning. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? He had been in Chechnya for work when he was caught and tortured by the police, his difference in circumstances principally the fact of his being an ethnic Russian meant that he was released finally giving him the courage to go public about what had happened and demand that the authorities investigate. It was released on June 30, 2020 by HBO Films. Advocacy meets suspense in "Welcome to Chechnya," a chilling examination of both the brutality that the Chechen LGBT community is forced to face on a daily basis and the difficulty of leaving. 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. 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. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. On location, the team followed strict protocols with footage. 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. I want people to know whats going on there. Chechnya's been especially . Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. The unrelated subjects were mostly queer activists in New York who I found on Instagram and elsewhere, France said. 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. Footage of them actually being tortured a clip, in David Frances 2012 How to Survive a was! 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