On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. "[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]. Homosexuality and gender nonconformity have long been frowned upon in Chechen society. Thank you! He covered the the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal and wrote the bestselling book Our Fathers, which was turned into a Showtime movie. And I understood, of course.. The face of a volunteer, Miguel Grisanti, is used to cloak the real subject in Welcome to Chechnya.. So I decided to lay low., Its not gone well for Anya. Anya's story is one of the main threads. 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. Im still processing, and so is the rest of the crew. Welcome to Chechnya: Directed by David France. Director David Frances 2012 How to Survive a Plague was to my mind one of the decades finest documentaries. 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. 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. 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. I appeared to be smiling at my own image while actually grabbing shots over his shoulder. It said that people in the caf saw the camera and had become nervous about it, that I should hide it better, Ivanova recounts. (We hear their real voices almost the entire film is subtitled. I was so involved in the technical work for the months leading up to Sundance that I hadnt stepped back to see the film. On location, the team followed strict protocols with footage. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. Follow. What we did was to borrow from the world of deepfakes and find this social justice use for it, he explained. 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. 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. . (Weve come a long way from slapping black bars over their eyes or sitting in a shadow on Dateline.) Theres a gasp-inducing moment when Grisha goes public and the digital augmentations drop away, revealing his real face for the first time. 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. 2022 International Documentary Association. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks Id filmed. Being there made me feel like Id been sent back to the French Resistance. A FILM BY DAVID FRANCE. 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. His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to 'cleanse' the republic. Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. (The Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. A Anya la seguiremos en una fuga de pelcula de suspenso y algo similar pasar con otros personajes. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. I was thankful we were able to capture that., For her part, Ivanova received some visitors after several expeditions for the film. Maybe it shouldnt be. For security reasons, these individuals are introduced with aliases, and their circumstances and whereabouts are left deliberately vague. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. There are many people not identified at all, but the doc includes disturbing and graphic footage of them being beaten and tortured. The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. We also see a few clips that France acquired including a gay man being raped by his captors and a lesbian whose life is about to be ended by members of her own family and it sucks the breath right out of you. So she held the GoPro low, shielding it with her other arm, or made sure to tuck it behind a coffee cup. 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. Horrific. Nichols said he was won over by Frances film. 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. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020 and was released on June 30, 2020, by HBO Films. Chechen authorities let him go because he is not ethnically Chechen. 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. For securitys sake, Ivanova needed to use a burner phone rather than her own. 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. Like all great political documentaries, Welcome to Chechnya is a call to action. Its not a story about me, France says simply. Theyre one of Hollywoods brightest starsand most troubled actors. 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. At no time were lights or external sound gear used on the film, with two exceptions. Since 2016, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has led a pogrom against the . 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. 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. They talk about their injuries and show us bruises that havent yet healed. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Frances movie is very much an on-the-ground account of these happenings. Be a witness. Managing to extricate men and women from there, they looked after them in safe houses in Moscow and elsewhere, before finally in the best outcome, at least relocating them to where they could live in safety. And this changes nothing. Enter activists David Isteev and Olga Baranova of Chechnyas covert LGBTQ+ network, a modern-day Underground Railroad smuggling the regimes would-be victims to secret safe houses where they can await visas and asylum from sympathetic countries. David France on His Chilling HBO Documentary Welcome to Chechnya, "Gay man takes Russia to Europe's rights court over Chechnya LGBT+ attacks", "New Reports of Gay Singer Abducted and Murdered in Chechnya", "The 18 Movies We're Dying to See at Sundance", "Final days of Adelaide Film Festival serves up more winners", "Sundance Film Festival Awards: 'Minari' Scores Double Top Honors The Complete Winners List", "Zmagovalec obinstva na 36. festivalu LGBT filma", "GLAAD Unveils Nominees For 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards; Deadline's New Hollywood Podcast Honored With Special Recognition Award", "VES Awards Nominations: 'Tenet', 'Midnight Sky', 'Extraction', 'Soul' & 'Mandalorian' Among Titles In Visual Effects Hunt", "BAFTA TV 2021: The Winners and Nominations for the Virgin Media British Academy Television Awards and British Academy Television Craft Awards", "Ted Lasso, The Handmaid's Tale, and Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist lead Inaugural HCA TV Awards Nominations Hollywood Critics Association", BAFTA TV Award for Best International Programme, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Welcome_to_Chechnya&oldid=1132475176, Documentary films about violence against LGBT people, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, U.S. Welcome to Chechnya notes that, under the Trump administration, the United States had not accepted any refugees from Chechnya or the Russian Federation who were fleeing persecution, torture and death because of their sexual orientation. Without that outrage, it will keep going. Sometimes thats a tall order. Welcome to Chechnya follows the stories of some of the gay men and women attempting to move to safety. 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. In Russia, this equipment needs certain certifications and permissions. We witnessed the dramatic press conference, organised by Russias Committee against Torture, at which that happened, which was also the moment that the film let slip the visual technique that had allowed the director to mask the faces of his subjects (the pioneering effect essentially reverses the image-manipulating possibilities of DeepFake). His almost incredible sang froid was matched only by that of his colleague Olga Baranova. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. This is nonsense, he says. Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story. Weve heard historical context, seen horrific trophy videos of assault and murder, and spent time in the secret shelter where queer refugees await visas. Anyone can read what you share. Its footage that was shot as trophies by the people who committed those crimes. It was released on June 30, 2020 by HBO Films. This technology allowed us to just stretch the facesover the images that I shot in the film. Luckily, they had enough faith in me. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Welcome to Chechnya is a terrifying documentary about the gay purges happening in Chechnya, Russia. I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, France said. And as in France's first film, the people. The mysterious disappearance of gay Chechen singer Zelim Bakaev after a visit to Grozny for his sister's wedding in August 2017[7] also receives a brief mention in the film. 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. When the documentarian David France decided to chronicle the anti-gay and lesbian purges that had unleashed a wave of fear and violence in Chechnya, he needed more than just a camera. The plan was for Ivanova to control her GoPro with a smartphone app, like Kurov did with his Sony. A lavalier mic (considered professional gear, thus suspect) was used when safely inside the shelter. They are tough. We still dont know what happened; watching clips of him is unsettling, and seeing the Moscow exiles speculate as to what happened to him is unexpectedly moving. 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. I wanted you to feel what he felt at that moment, France said. Blurring out a mob informant? And as in Frances first film, the people most in desperate need of help have once again been abandoned to their own devices. ET on HBO. And not just them, but their family members, too. Chechen forces successfully raided Russian-held Grozny for weapons in March. 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. (Courtesy of HBO) "Welcome to Chechnya" premieres Tuesday on HBO. I felt the lack of any sort of safety net, and that was very frightening. (Before getting out of the cab, he dropped his own iPhone X on the floor.) At the airport, photography is not allowed, though authorities tolerate selfies. hide caption. 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. This visual strategy has a curious effect: you look at people without really being able to see them. Plans start at $9.99/month. The most nerve-wracking sequence in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. Were introduced to members of the Russian LGBTQ Network, whose members put their own safety at risk by smuggling people out of Chechnya and, in the best-case scenarios, out of Russia. Chechnya's . 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. I want people to be invested in it. 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 then theres the evidence we see for ourselves: cell phone footage of people being beaten and harassed. When he made his first documentary, 2012's How to Survive a Plague, about the early AIDS activists in America, the director didn't hesitate to describe his protagonists there as heroes, for the way that they stood up for what they believed in, against adversity: it's an accolade that seems no less appropriate here. Whats not obvious in the filmthough not on purposeis that this shot was taken from the backup teams taxi, not Anyas. The mere presence of. deductible, Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. The First Chechen War explains a lot of what Russia and Putin are doing in Ukraine today: On New Year's Eve, 1994 Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles poured into the streets of Grozny with an assault expected to snuff out the self-declared Chechcen Republic of Ichkeria, as black smoke poured into the sky from oil tanks set ablaze by a dawn artillery bombardment. The Network helps him move to an undisclosed location in Europe with his boyfriend of 10 years. For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. 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. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. David France, left, and the face-capture producer Johnny Han watch a volunteer in the studio. 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. Similarly harrowing, but also more hopeful, is the experience of a 30-year-old Russian businessman, here called "Grisha," who was detained and beaten for 12 days during a trip to Chechnya. They were keepsakes from these horrible events, and they were also deliverables. 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. Until it doesnt: In one of the films more breathtaking moments, the effects drop away after a gay refugee, Maksim Lapunov, reclaims his name and his real face at a news conference. In a sense, Welcome to Chechnya is an applied special effect that lasts an entire movie. You can just put something like a book on top of the GoPro and it becomes invisible. She adds, You can always tell them you didnt understand.. 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. 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. Heinous. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. 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. They thought I was some sort of crazy nut.. Sustenance Without Sacrifices: Towards Equitable Workplaces, Sound Advice: How to Ensure Your Audio Playback Comes Through Loud and Clear, Documentary Sound: Setting up a Wireless System, 'The Rescue' Recounts the 2018 Thailand Cave Mission, Go with the Flow: Streamlining Your Post-Production Process, How Hidden Cameras Captured a Daring Rescue in 'Welcome to Chechnya'. Those are the stories that have really fascinated me the way that their activists handle these challenges and the specter of death. Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. (The films cinematographer, Askold Kurov, stepped aside for this mission since its cover story required a female camera operator.). It began with a drug raid when police arrested a young man and found sexually explicit images of men on his phone. 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. Oscar; Crticas; . It was a gay purge. Posted on 21 de fevereiro de 2022 by . Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. 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. When he was captured on the streets of Grozny, he had been selling balloon art. It's a call for justice for the tortured and murdered in Chechnya, and a stark reminder of the realities many. And they purchased one small LED panela Yongnuo YN-160 IIIfor shooting inside dark rooms or cars at night. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. 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. Another of these young people tries to slit their wrists. Playing the aunties are cameraperson Alexandra Ivanova and a female activist. 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. 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. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya. Welcome to Chechnya ends almost exactly as it begins, only a year later with a weary Isteev telling us this story still doesnt have an ending. Then he gets another call. Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted: "Magomed Tushayev, one of . It was my greatest fear: that I could blow up the whole operation. (A good number of the refugees wind up in Canada, while to the surprise of absolutely nobody the Trump administration has yet to admit any into the U.S.) Isteev is introduced taking a cellphone call with the camera circling around him like the hero in an action movie, one of many times France borrows the visual language of Hollywood thrillers to hammer home his storys urgency. And Im still on it. One creative project thats come out of Harrells program, the Center for Advanced Virtuality, is a seven-minute video titled In Event of Moon Disaster. In it, a notorious 1969 speech written for Richard Nixon meant to be delivered only in the wake of a catastrophic Apollo 11 mishap is merged with the actual televised 1974 resignation speech, resulting in a spooky bit of alternative history. They have . Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that could come back to haunt them. Chechnya runs itself as basically an autonomous entity, with a corrupt, oligarchic power structure . Like other refugees, Anya had her face replaced with a digital veil in post-production (see In Digital Disguise). Now Streaming. The cruelty is medieval, but the time is now. Unlike the others, Grisha is unmasked late in the film when he goes before cameras to testify about whats happening in Chechnya. Finding the right word to describe Welcome to Chechnya isnt easy. 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. And it still is. I love her. Courtroom porn and social media have turned innocent bystanders into a mass of mudslingers. 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). After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. ), Everybody understood the importance of telling the story. And what they had put together was a search and rescue operation, like something that you would imagine in a World War II movie. Quite popular in Russia, GoPro is a camera everybody can have, with no questions asked, Ivanova says. June 30, 2020. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. T he anti-gay purge in Chechnya began in 2017. That tell is important, Laney said. We come to care about them. The unrelated subjects were mostly queer activists in New York who I found on Instagram and elsewhere, France said. Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. 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 activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Youre forced to reckon with the nature of identityhow it can cost someone their life. Thats where he was seized by the security agents. Like most of the victims in Welcome to Chechnya, Grishas identity is hidden with deep fake technology. The step . 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. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? For Welcome to Chechnya, he set up a secret editing suite and remained entirely offline while on the job. Activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people tortured! T an option away, revealing his real face for the film, stepped aside for this mission since cover! Met online, policemen hiding in the filmthough not on purposeis that shot! The world of deepfakes and find this social justice use for it, he and the face-capture producer Han! I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, said. Account of these happenings rest of the folks Id filmed come a long way from black! 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