The film follows the work of activists rescuing survivors of torture in Chechnya. A backup team sits unacknowledged at a separate table: coordinator Isteev, another activist, and France, who captures some wide shots on his iPhone. 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. 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. They were keepsakes from these horrible events, and they were also deliverables. Posted on 21 de fevereiro de 2022 by . The mere presence of France's camera might endanger their lives and their work, but it's also crucial to drawing international attention to the Chechen government's abuses. 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. Without them, you could be considered a spy and spend many years in prison. 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. Oscar-nominated filmmaker and former investigative journalist David France has a new documentary, Welcome To Chechnya, debuting on HBO June 30 th, which has already won multiple awards on the film festival circuit. 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. Oscar; Crticas; . After the initial gains of the Russian army, the Chechen rebels demonstrated a . Chechen authorities let him go because he is not ethnically Chechen. Hearing the victims recount their stories is devastating. Movie. 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. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. All rights reserved. And France had even more horrifying clips that he held back. I love her. Director David Frances 2012 How to Survive a Plague was to my mind one of the decades finest documentaries. 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. At the airport, photography is not allowed, though authorities tolerate selfies. 'Country Queers' shares the 'joy' and 'pain' of rural LGBTQ life, NYC's Queer Liberation March draws thousands, clashes with NYPD, Two New Yorkers vie to be first gay Black men in Congress. 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. "People in Chechnya who are suspected of being lesbian, gay or bisexual, are facing a 'new wave of persecution' following a spate of killings involving torture, and other rights abuses," a group. 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 face moves exactly the same way. Ghastly. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. 21 . My point in telling the story is to tell just enough of it so that its undeniable that its going on there. To have the savvy to negotiate a political media landscape where a video could potentially be a deepfake, or a legitimate video could be called a deepfake, I think those are cases people need to be aware of, he said. Because they are still in safe houses, and they are still pursuing this suitTheres no telling how long that battles going to last, but theyre in it for the long run., Lapunov was able to feel some of that support when he traveled to the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year for the docs premiere. A lavalier mic (considered professional gear, thus suspect) was used when safely inside the shelter. 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. He denies the torture outright, in other words; so does the Kremlin. Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's brutal leader, making a defiant promise to seize Kyiv. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. Some thought it was too much of a risk. It allows us to feel that whammy of: This guy was beaten up and tortured and electrocuted and I am seeing him him being his face bare his soul.. 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. 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. Those are the stories that have really fascinated me the way that their activists handle these challenges and the specter of death. The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. 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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. 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. 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. Its a matter of trusting the process.. 4,370 followers. Nonetheless, a camera inside the cab keeps recording. 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. All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. Anya decides to escape, but that isn't so easy with the authorities soon hot on her trail. It began with a drug raid when police arrested a young man and found sexually explicit images of men on his phone. Its a huge enterprise but I think it works, he added. Thats where he was seized by the security agents. 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. The face of a volunteer, Miguel Grisanti, is used to cloak the real subject in Welcome to Chechnya.. 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. Frances provocative solution is Welcome to Chechnya, the unsettling film that debuted Tuesday on HBO and involves extensive postproduction work: It marshals advanced computer technology to superimpose supple, completely fabricated faces over 23 hunted individuals. He is confronted over the allegation that. 2022 International Documentary Association. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. And that hasnt changed since the documentary was completed. Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that could come back to haunt them. Despite this, she managed to capture all the essentials. The camerawork is rough and ragged; the sense of menace is palpable. 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. Playing the aunties are cameraperson Alexandra Ivanova and a female activist. From Academy Award-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson) comes Welcome to Chechnya, a powerful and eye-opening documentary about a. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. All rights reserved. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. The activists dont know where she is, but, according to France, Theyve been told shes alive.. 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 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. 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. 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