For securitys sake, Ivanova needed to use a burner phone rather than her own. 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. 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. Its a matter of trusting the process.. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. 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. At no time were lights or external sound gear used on the film, with two exceptions. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. 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. Would you like to receive event invitations, funding news, and other updates from the International Documentary Association? Its footage that was shot as trophies by the people who committed those crimes. Heinous. Afterwards, the activists reunite at a meeting spot, where the women change clothes and Anyas phone is destroyed. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Twitter has blocked the account of the Frontal program, which is aired on the German ZDF TV channel. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that could come back to haunt them. 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. Sometimes thats a tall order. On one level, of course, Welcome to Chechnya looked to be about exactly that and on a more extreme level than anything weve seen before. But I knew I wanted to tell a much more in-depth story about what something as hideous as this meant to the people who survived it.. Maybe shocking. It was very cumbersome, but necessary to keep my end of the promise, France said. 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. 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. Chechnya's been especially . Now Streaming. 212 following. Training viewers to look for even the obvious signs would help, he said. I was told that Maxim had agreed, even on the first conversation, to allow me to film him and that he was a charismatic character, a person who is an entertainer, France said. Im still in contact with all those people. Instead, they edited the film in a windowless room in order to keep with security protocols. Tushayev was responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering LGBTQ+ people. That's how the moscow duchy looked like in 14th century. 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 most nerve-wracking sequence in David France's Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. Chechnyas leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. It began with a drug raid when police arrested a young man and found sexually explicit images of men on his phone. With Olga Baranova, David Isteev, Ramzan Kadyrov, Maxim Lapunov. Read that word, and digest what it means. Be a witness. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. The plan was for Ivanova to control her GoPro with a smartphone app, like Kurov did with his Sony. Welcome to Chechnya follows the work of the Russian LGBTQ Network, an activist group working to combat genocide in Chechnya. 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. Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. This visual strategy has a curious effect: you look at people without really being able to see them. [4] To protect the identities of the interviewees, they could not move the footage across the internet nor work on it in an open studio setting. 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. After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. For most of the 100 minutes that followed, Isteev seemed to be in much the same position, trying to juggle the fates of those who had ended up under his protection as he attempted to spirit them to safety. [1] The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists.[1]. hide caption. With little emotion, the young man explains his scars as his boyfriend touches those spots and says nothing. Want to get a head start on your Oscar predictions? Nonetheless, a camera inside the cab keeps recording. It was a gay purge. The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. Kadyrov and his security forces have been widely accused by international human rights groups of extrajudicial arrests, torture and killings. 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). Republican Congressman Blames Mass Shootings on Women Having Rights. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. 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. 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. 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 A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, 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. 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. And as in Frances first film, the people most in desperate need of help have once again been abandoned to their own devices. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. 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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. "[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]. In one video, an incarcerated man is sexually assaulted off-camera by police. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. 'They Told Me I Wasn't A Human Being': Gay Men Speak Of Brutal Treatment In Chechnya, Activists Say 40 Detained And 2 Dead In Gay Purge In Chechnya. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. And not just them, but their family members, too. France is an award-winning journalist who has been a war correspondent in Central America. 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. 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. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. Welcome to Chechnya: Directed by David France. [1] The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists. Despite this, she managed to capture all the essentials. Another of these young people tries to slit their wrists. 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. Its not a story about me, France says simply. Panetta recalled talking with her mother, who had sent her bad information about Covid-19. "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. 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. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. Anya, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Chechen government and extensive resources to track her down, is deposited into an apartment at an undisclosed location in Eurasia. In Russia, this equipment needs certain certifications and permissions. People and footage had to be protected at all costs. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. I think the point's been made and now it's time to take . These are the images being broadcast by Russian propaganda channels, leveraging the very presence of Chechen. 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 . France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. This documentary, which airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HBO, shows us what's happening to gay people in that Russian republic and the rest of the Russian Federation and it's deeply . France didnt want to talk about any threats he or other members of the production team might have received. Uno de los casos que sigue el documental es el de "Anya", una joven pidiendo ayuda despus de que su to descubre su identidad homosexual. Every step of the way, things were air-gapped to defend against hacks. Plans start at $9.99/month. David France, left, and the face-capture producer Johnny Han watch a volunteer in the studio. 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. 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. (Photo courtesy of HBO Documentary Films via AP) "Bogdan" and his boyfriend, "Grisha," stress out as they attempt to escape from Russia. Anyone can read what you share. Two of these operations frame the narrative of Welcome to Chechnya: the exfiltration of a 21-year-old woman with the pseudonym Anya, whose uncle learned she is lesbian and threatened to expose her . Follow. [1] Instead, they deployed Frances iPhone X and a GoPro Hero6. from Anya, a 21-year-old threatened by her uncle to have intercourse with him, or he'll reveal her homosexuality to her father, a high-ranking official . The most nerve-wracking sequence in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. The main camera, operated by Kurov, was a Sony FDR-AX100 handycam. The 10 Best Movies of 2020 (So Far) Review: Spike Lees Da 5 Bloods Is Gold The Wild Life and Many Loves of Ava Gardner Inside Pete Davidson and John Mulaneys Make-A-Wish Friendship Now Streaming: Over 100 Years of Black Defiance at the Movies Is TV Sabotaging Itself With Shrinking Shows? From the Archive: Exposing MGMs Smear Campaign Against Rape Survivor Patricia Douglas. The other is the story of "Grisha", a 30-year-old man who went to work in Chechnya only to be arrested, tortured and forced to give up details of other. All of the above. 2023 Cond Nast. 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. Thank you! Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? The moment is extremely tense. 21 . 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. All Rights Reserved. But a problem surfaced the night before the rescue. The website's critics consensus reads: "An illuminating and urgent call to action, Welcome to Chechnya portrays the horrors of the mass persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in the Chechen Republic with tenacity and tenderness. Many of the faces we see are actually the faces of people from outside Chechnya, who lent their likenesses to the film. Being there made me feel like Id been sent back to the French Resistance. So theres a lot of work to be done.. 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. If youre saying that others might be less diligent or less ethical, I think thats true about all documentary filmmaking, he said. 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. Welcome to Chechnya airs June 30 at 7 p.m. By Neetha K Published on : 18:00 PST, Jun 30, 2020 . It smiles, it cries in exactly the same way, but it is somebody elses face.. 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 . His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to 'cleanse' the republic. Its not legal to encrypt in Russia, so we were taking a risk, France notes. 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). 2020 documentary about the anti-LGBT purges in Chechnya, facial replacement techniques using artificial intelligence, Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature, Outstanding Directional Achievement in Documentary, Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, "HBO Documentary Films Lands Sundance-Bound Welcome To Chechnya, About Harsh Plight Of LGBTQ Community In Russian Republic", "How Hidden Cameras Captured a Daring Rescue in 'Welcome to Chechnya'", "Sundance 2020: How VFX Pulled Welcome to Chechnya Out of the Shadows Exclusive", 'It Only Ends When They're Dead.' Horrific. 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. Here security guards inspect passports and sharply confer about one. A checkpoint is en route. 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. I want people to be invested in it. 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.". Although some didnt. We dont have such people here. To avoid exposing their work, it was shot in secret, using hidden cameras, cell phones, GoPros, and handycams. That is what the tyrannical leader Ramzan Kadyrov has decided. 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