And then theres Maxim Lapunov, who came to Moscow after being released from prison, where he was tortured for several weeks in 2017. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. To make matters worse, the GoPro screen would power off after one minute. I want them to feel responsible for doing something to help stop it., Donate to the newsroom now. Filmmaker David France goes inside what can only be called a genocide that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has unleashed against his LGBTQ citizens. It was released on June 30, 2020 by HBO Films. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. We dont talk about this much, but were still in therapy about it. Welcome to Chechnya is a terrifying documentary about the gay purges happening in Chechnya, Russia. 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. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. 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. All technology has a dual moral purpose, he argued. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. I tried to install the app, and it didnt work. That meant Ivanova was sneaking peeks or shooting blind throughout the operation. [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]. And as in France's first film, the people. 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. Disgraceful. 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. The Network helps him move to an undisclosed location in Europe with his boyfriend of 10 years. Speaking by Zoom from London, she summed up the swirl of emotions nervousness, liberation, even possible enlightenment set off by deepfakes arrival in the documentary world. Everybody understood that this needed to be exposed, France said. 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. (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. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. 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. 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. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. 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. Grisha now going by his real name, Maxim may have had his identity finally restored, but the fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar, refused in another rote court decision (his fight for justice continues at the European Court for Hight Rights). 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. With Olga Baranova, David Isteev, Ramzan Kadyrov, Maxim Lapunov. It was an insane proposition, but the cover story worked, France says. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax 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. If anything, the activists tell us, the women need more help escaping. (Before getting out of the cab, he dropped his own iPhone X on the floor.) There's no time for sweeping shots of foreign. . And they signed on as an act of activism.. The people chronicled in Frances film have pictures on their phones documenting the torture they suffered, some of which we see. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Chechnya, there are no homosexuals. Chechnya, also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, republic in southwestern Russia, situated on the northern flank of the Greater Caucasus range. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. This melding of techniques resulted in an illusion that received high marks from a Dartmouth study group researching the so-called uncanny valley, a metric of empathy for nonhuman faces. Maybe it shouldnt be. Since 2016, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has led a pogrom against the . 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. But a problem surfaced the night before the rescue. Here security guards inspect passports and sharply confer about one. In Russia, this equipment needs certain certifications and permissions. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. 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. 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. The found footage of attacks on members of the Chechen LGBTQ community illustrates the level of terror victims experienced and what might happen to them if they got caught. 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. The three films Ive made are about a kind of a radical kind of queer activism, that I think really leads the world in bringing a kind of a love-based activism to these really awful issues and making a difference, France said. Afterwards, the cards would be wiped clean. 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. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. 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. 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. 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. 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 . Like other refugees, Anya had her face replaced with a digital veil in post-production (see In Digital Disguise). 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. There were times when we actually backed off on some areas, the machine did better or sharper, and we were concerned that we werent telling the audience that something was going on.. After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. And that hasnt changed since the documentary was completed. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. 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. 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. Welcome To Chechnya (2020): Official Trailer | HBO. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) Maxim Lapunov at the Sundance Film Festival. These are the images being broadcast by Russian propaganda channels, leveraging the very presence of Chechen. [9][10], It was shown at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2020. We have group therapy sessions about it to process the work that we had gone through.. Courtroom porn and social media have turned innocent bystanders into a mass of mudslingers. 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. 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. 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. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. I wanted you to feel what he felt at that moment, France said. 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