We dont have any gays. If there are any, he continues, they ought to be eradicatedsent to Canada, for the sake of purifying the country. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. Appalling. And not just them, but their family members, too. On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. 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. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Chechnyas leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. hide caption. 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 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. "[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]. After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. Its a human life, and she only had this one chance to run. Adding to the pressure, At this point, theres no second camera inside, so everything was on me., The next stress came at the roadside checkpoint, when security guards are troubled by one passport. [1] 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. Giving them different faces also makes a kind of poetic sense: It's a reminder that to be LGBTQ in a repressive society is to never feel comfortable in your own skin. Maybe it shouldnt be. 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. And what they had put together was a search and rescue operation, like something that you would imagine in a World War II movie. With little emotion, the young man explains his scars as his boyfriend touches those spots and says nothing. People and footage had to be protected at all costs. I felt the lack of any sort of safety net, and that was very frightening. 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? Movie. 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. It was very cumbersome, but necessary to keep my end of the promise, France said. Its there that he first met the men and women who are featured in his new documentary Welcome to Chechnya, which premieres Tuesday on HBO. In the Russian republic of Chechnya, the gay community has been hunted. Data was immediately moved off-camera cards and loaded in triplicate onto encrypted drives; one was smuggled out of the country and two remained hidden in Russia. The face of a volunteer, Miguel Grisanti, is used to cloak the real subject in Welcome to Chechnya.. 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). We see some of those abuses in the movie's most disturbing footage, much of it secretly filmed on cell phones and spliced into the film in brief jolts. 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.. I think the point's been made and now it's time to take . The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. Another of these young people tries to slit their wrists. Where do the new faces actually come from? We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. I decided not to use any special equipment or hidden camerasfor example, a camera in your eyeglasses. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. For example, we hear within the opening few minutes the testimony of a young Muslim girl (named "Anya", although all names have been changed) whose sexuality has been discovered by her uncle, who vows to tell . His method essentially involved filming unrelated subjects in a studio with a nine-camera array capturing their faces from all angles. The cruelty is medieval, but the time is now. 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'. His entire family has to be moved. Without that outrage, it will keep going. The Trump Family Behaves Exactly How Youd Expect in Documentary Subpoenaed by Jan. 6 Committee. Activist David Isteev, left, and a cohort organize an escape in a scene from 'Welcome to Chechnya.'. 197 posts. Simply enter your email address in the box below, Joy of reunion: a happier moment in 'Welcome to Chechnya', Since propaganda of gay relationships was criminalised there in 2013, such anti-, The greater part of the action was caught on the move, with a disturbingly convincing tension. Nor did the editing and VFX suites in New York. Its a huge enterprise but I think it works, he added. 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. Everybody understood that this needed to be exposed, France said. Welcome to Chechnya, which premiered at Sundance in January and won the U.S. documentary special jury award for editing, is at once repellent and fascinating as were introduced to people whose lives are in danger because of their sexual orientation including some who have survived imprisonment, beatings and torture. Their cover story is that Anya is meeting two family friends who are taking her dress-shopping. But politicians have become targets, too. The face moves exactly the same way. Keeping people in hiding, taking care of people, keeping them safe and fed, and with medical care for this long extended period, while theyre still struggling with foreign governments to try to keep open that back door to humanitarian parole visas, France said. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. But the real subject of Frances film was something else, something (perhaps) more surprising, and (definitely) more life-affirming how, even in such bleak circumstances, there were people prepared to do something about what was happening. It's a bold gambit that may put off those who find it too duplicitous in the context of a documentary. 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. Instead, they edited the film in a windowless room in order to keep with security protocols. Many of the faces we see are actually the faces of people from outside Chechnya, who lent their likenesses to the film. The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. 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. Quite popular in Russia, GoPro is a camera everybody can have, with no questions asked, Ivanova says. Every step of the way, things were air-gapped to defend against hacks. Reflecting on his participation in Anyas rescue, France says, I dont think Ive experienced anything as harrowing as that in my life. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. 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. 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. [3] The approach is a "game changer in identity protection," according to Documentary Magazine, and a brand new tool for documentary filmmakers. Plans start at $9.99/month. 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. Immediately, as theyre being slapped awake and their arm bandaged, we hear a reprimand: Dont fucking create problems for us. And: There are other people here besides you.. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. Horrific. He called it an underblur or halo, intentionally added so youll be aware of the manipulation. Sign Up Now Welcome to Chechnya (HBO) Genres original, documentary Runtime 1 hr 47 min Release Year 2020 About This Movie 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. 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. 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. 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. Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted: "Magomed Tushayev, one of . Would you like to receive event invitations, funding news, and other updates from the International Documentary Association? 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. What we did was to borrow from the world of deepfakes and find this social justice use for it, he explained. What was a very expensive proposition has become even more expensive. Chechen forces successfully raided Russian-held Grozny for weapons in March. A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya. 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. France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. A checkpoint is en route. None of that is included in the film. This is nonsense, he says. (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. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. If anything, the activists tell us, the women need more help escaping. Its not legal to encrypt in Russia, so we were taking a risk, France notes. 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. What made the time right for the documentary to be released now? Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya are there tigers in andaman and nicobar islands? For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. Frances movie is very much an on-the-ground account of these happenings. Welcome to Chechnya follows the stories of some of the gay men and women attempting to move to safety. And then theres the evidence we see for ourselves: cell phone footage of people being beaten and harassed. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. 50% of the Chechen population killed in 1944 and 200 000 Chechens killed (1/5 of the population) during the Chechen wars and hundreds of Chechens being assinated and going missing each year and no one gives a rats ass about Chechnya. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. They were horrible stories and theres no doubt that they were real, France, an Oscar-nominated activist filmmaker, said. 21 . 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. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) So last century. Read that word, and digest what it means. And I was outraged that they were being forced to do this all on their own, and that the world wasnt coming to pay attention to and put pressure against the Chechen government.". Be a witness. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. To remain inconspicuous, only amateur camera gear was used on the film. The main camera, operated by Kurov, was a Sony FDR-AX100 handycam. The piece will go live on July 20 at moondisaster.org. [11], The film received universal critical acclaim, holding an approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 72 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. (We hear their real voices almost the entire film is subtitled. All technology has a dual moral purpose, he argued. It said that people in the caf saw the camera and had become nervous about it, that I should hide it better, Ivanova recounts. 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. Its an essential part of our total cultural history: the face as window, the core of our identity, the most distinguishing feature of the body, said Bill Nichols, professor emeritus at San Francisco State University and a pioneer in the field of documentary studies. Her uncles threatening to out her unless she has sex with him, and given the high-profile family connections Isteev and Baranova have even less time and resources than usual to sneak her out of the country. This happened shortly after Frontal journalists published their investigation Forced Adoption: The Missing Children of Kherson on the social network. Welcome to Chechnya is a grimly ironic title for a documentary that plays like a chilling undercover thriller. Chechnya runs itself as basically an autonomous entity, with a corrupt, oligarchic power structure . 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 Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Anya arrives and Ivanova films the meetup surreptitiously on a GoPro. 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. 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 . Distressing. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. 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. 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. Chechen authorities let him go because he is not ethnically Chechen. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Chechnya is likely to be the most urgent documentary of the year, but makes many exploitative missteps along the way. And if a post-Trump administration merely restored the Obama-era foreign policies that defended LGBTQ people around the world, then that would definitely cause a change in whats happening in Russia and elsewhere.. Without them, you could be considered a spy and spend many years in prison. And it restores to them their humanity in a way that would not have been possible under other circumstances., Still, why should we trust a documentary that uses deepfakes? 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. 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. I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, France said. I want people to know whats 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. ), Everybody understood the importance of telling the story. 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. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. 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. And they signed on as an act of activism.. '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. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. Blurring out a mob informant? Theyre one of Hollywoods brightest starsand most troubled actors. / how old is aiger in beyblade burst rise / welcome to chechnya what happened to anya By 21 Feb 2022 The plan was for Ivanova to control her GoPro with a smartphone app, like Kurov did with his Sony. Patricia Thomson is a longtime film journalist and contributing writer for American Cinematographer. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. By Neetha K Published on : 18:00 PST, Jun 30, 2020 . The activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. Being there made me feel like Id been sent back to the French Resistance. 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. I was thankful we were able to capture that., For her part, Ivanova received some visitors after several expeditions for the film. Before Anya even set foot in the restaurant, Ivanova got a warning scrawled on a napkin. 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.. All rights reserved. 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. 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. Even Facebook, not known for its strict policing of content, pledged to ban deepfakes in January. Welcome to Chechnya follows the work of the Russian LGBTQ Network, an activist group working to combat genocide in Chechnya. Verified. He denies the torture outright, in other words; so does the Kremlin. 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. 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