Anya and her car of dress-shoppers got through. 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. Now we get to witness an actual extraction from Chechnyathe mechanics, the risks and the bravery involved. (France did insist, however, on 4K for cinematic lift.). [3] The approach is a "game changer in identity protection," according to Documentary Magazine, and a brand new tool for documentary filmmakers. People there are killed and tortured for being gay, as described in scary detail within the film. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. But France has some hope that Putin can be pressured to rein in Kadyrov and stop him and the others who, under his authority, are carrying out these atrocities. If European countries were united as a single voice on LGBTQ issues, he said, that could happen. And yet, here is proof., France spent about 18 months filming in Moscow and Chechnya. The next nail-biter is at the airports Passport Checkpoint. IE 11 is not supported. (Pavel Golovkin | AP file photo) Chechen regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov smiles prior to President Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 1, 2016. Documentarian David France faced an unenviable challenge with his latest film, "Welcome to Chechnya.". It's a bold gambit that may put off those who find it too duplicitous in the context of a documentary. 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. Shes just fearless, says France. 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. Courtroom porn and social media have turned innocent bystanders into a mass of mudslingers. They were sent over WhatsApp groups up the chain of command, so that Ramzan Kadyrov would know that his orders are being carried out., And when you saw the footage, I realized that I wanted to take that away from them, and turn their trophies into evidence, he continued. Afterwards, the activists reunite at a meeting spot, where the women change clothes and Anyas phone is destroyed. Welcome to Chechnya: Directed by David France. And making people aware of whats happening with a film like Welcome to Chechnya is the first 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. 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. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. And what they had put together was a search and rescue operation, like something that you would imagine in a World War II movie. 197 posts. And also to support Maxim Lapunov and his family in their lawsuit. He was tortured by. [9][10], It was shown at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2020. Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian government has shut down . 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. 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. Amid safety concerns, and anxiety over the fate of a $200 million movie, Where to Watch the Biggest 2023 Awards Contenders. I felt the lack of any sort of safety net, and that was very frightening. I love her. He had seen television news interviews from the Russian, largely Muslim republic: the subjects were dimmed in shadows, their voices digitally altered, but he found it hard to connect with them. "We don't have such people here," declares Ramzan Kadyrov, chuckling . Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the autonomous. Shooting Scenarios is a new column that takes a single scene and breaks it down cinematographically, looking at shooting logistics, creative challenges, and camera gear deployed. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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.. Ghastly. For security reasons, these individuals are introduced with aliases, and their circumstances and whereabouts are left deliberately vague. The most nerve-wracking sequence in David France's Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. . I was thankful we were able to capture that., For her part, Ivanova received some visitors after several expeditions for the film. What comes across is the ease with which a person can disappear in plain sight, for obvious reasons, and a governmentcommitted to its hateful pogromcan simply shrug it off. We come to care about them. [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. She would say, But it was texted to me by my friend. And the conversation I had with her is what I want people to have after seeing my film: Where did it come from?, In a way, she said, that discussion is more important than specific techniques on how to spot deepfakes because the technology is going to get better so fast., At the moment, she added, most deepfakes you can spot with the naked eye., France isnt hiding his. Chechnya runs itself as basically an autonomous entity, with a corrupt, oligarchic power structure . (The films cinematographer, Askold Kurov, stepped aside for this mission since its cover story required a female camera operator.). Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's brutal leader, making a defiant promise to seize Kyiv. 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. Playing the aunties are cameraperson Alexandra Ivanova and a female activist. I didnt want to create a reel of horrors, I wanted to underscore what had happened to the people who were in the film, France said. 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. 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. Nonetheless, a camera inside the cab keeps recording. 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. We get to see victims in lighter moments although those simply underscore the fact that these otherwise average, bright, funny people are living with the threat of torture and death hanging over them. When he was captured on the streets of Grozny, he had been selling balloon art. 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. 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.". France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. And they signed on as an act of activism.. 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. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. Moved by the plight of queer people trying to escape government-sanctioned persecution of the Russian state's LGBTQ community, he embedded himself in the rescue efforts to smuggle out refugees to safer corners of the . 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. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. Disgraceful. 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. I want them to feel responsible for doing something to help stop it., Donate to the newsroom now. 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. . 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. '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. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. These are the images being broadcast by Russian propaganda channels, leveraging the very presence of Chechen. For securitys sake, Ivanova needed to use a burner phone rather than her own. Without them, you could be considered a spy and spend many years in prison. Shameful. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. The activists are sure to remind us that this violence affects more than just cisgender gay men; the regime is equally perilous for cis women and trans people, though these other stories dont seem to travel nearly as far. And while there initially isn't much background on the two fugitive subjects the 30-year-old "Grisha" and the 21-year-old Muslim lesbian "Anya" you quickly understand why. Si su padre, miembro del gobierno checheno . Whats not obvious in the filmthough not on purposeis that this shot was taken from the backup teams taxi, not Anyas. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. ), Everybody understood the importance of telling the story. 4,370 followers. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. And that hasnt changed since the documentary was completed. For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. He had been in Chechnya for work when he was caught and tortured by the police, his difference in circumstances principally the fact of his being an ethnic Russian meant that he was released finally giving him the courage to go public about what had happened and demand that the authorities investigate. Say hello to deepfake. Posted on 21 de fevereiro de 2022 by . Eventually he opted for advanced facial replacement techniques using artificial intelligence and novel visual effects technology so the viewer could see real faces displaying real emotions while still protecting the identities of the speakers. Blurring out a mob informant? Chechnyas leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. It was an insane proposition, but the cover story worked, France says. Welcome to Chechnya is likely to be the most urgent documentary of the year, but makes many exploitative missteps along the way. Welcome to Chechnya follows the stories of some of the gay men and women attempting to move to safety. Among those aided by the network is 21-year-old "Anya," the daughter of a high-ranking Chechen official. 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. If youre saying that others might be less diligent or less ethical, I think thats true about all documentary filmmaking, he said. To remain inconspicuous, only amateur camera gear was used on the film. Instead, they deployed Frances iPhone X and a GoPro Hero6. 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. 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. But its much more meaningful. The camerawork is rough and ragged; the sense of menace is palpable. 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.' His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to 'cleanse' the republic. Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically. Verified. Twitter has blocked the account of the Frontal program, which is aired on the German ZDF TV channel. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This happened shortly after Frontal journalists published their investigation Forced Adoption: The Missing Children of Kherson on the social network. (We hear their real voices almost the entire film is subtitled. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. Filmed between August 2017 and early 2019, "Welcome to Chechnya" focuses on LGBT people forced to flee Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. 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. 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. Every step of the way, things were air-gapped to defend against hacks. His method essentially involved filming unrelated subjects in a studio with a nine-camera array capturing their faces from all angles. Quite popular in Russia, GoPro is a camera everybody can have, with no questions asked, Ivanova says. All technology has a dual moral purpose, he argued. Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger 7. Interspersing the film we saw snatches of video (shot by the perpetrators, intercepted by activists) that showed just that happening, a gay purge being carried out in horrifically vivid detail. And not just them, but their family members, too. Certain hyped-up scenes, with their insistent music and TV expose vibe, fall flat precisely because they add an energy that this situation, an outright tragedy, shouldnt need in order to make its point. That's how the moscow duchy looked like in 14th century. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya. / how old is aiger in beyblade burst rise / welcome to chechnya what happened to anya By 21 Feb 2022 Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. They have . Post author: Post published: May 11, 2022 Post category: orchard lake united hockey Post comments: famous asian psychologists famous asian psychologists 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. 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. 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. This technology allowed us to just stretch the facesover the images that I shot in the film. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. Their storylines are framed by the narrative . Those are the stories that have really fascinated me the way that their activists handle these challenges and the specter of death. Like most of the victims in Welcome to Chechnya, Grishas identity is hidden with deep fake technology. After ineffective attempts at funding Chechen opposition groups, a Russian invasion began on December 11, 1994. Thank you! Their operation, run from a discreet location that becomes a haven for escapees-in-wait, receives about 25 new refugees a month. It's a call for justice for the tortured and murdered in Chechnya, and a stark reminder of the realities many. 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. She was being blackmailed by an uncle who discovered she is a lesbian . It smiles, it cries in exactly the same way, but it is somebody elses face.. 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. 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. In 2017, the closed Southwestern Russian republic of Chechnya became the center of a massive human rights crisis when the government started arresting, abducting, killing, and torturing LGBTIQ+ . Be a witness. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story. The most nerve-wracking sequence in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. All Rights Reserved. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. 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. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize, David Isteev, Olga Baranova, Maxim Lapunov, Panorama Publikumspreis (audience award) for Best Documentary, Ryan Laney, Eugen Brunig, Maxwell Anderson, Johnny Han and Piers Dennis, David France, Alice Henty, Askold Kurov and Joy A Tomchin, Best Broadcast Network or Cable Docuseries, Documentary Television Movie, or Non-Fiction Series, Alice Henty, David France, Joy A. Tomchin, Askold Kurov and Igor Myakotin, The Most Valuable Documentary of the Year, This page was last edited on 9 January 2023, at 01:52. Oscar; Crticas; . [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]. His entire family has to be moved. 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. Frances movie is very much an on-the-ground account of these happenings. Chechnya, there are no homosexuals. The mere presence of. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks Id filmed. 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). Its not a story about me, France says simply. 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. This is nonsense, he says. France wanted to put a real human face on the story, so conventional techniques of disguising one's appearance, such as blurring their faces, filming them in darkness or hiring actors to stage re-enactments were not enough. 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. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. 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. But things got much worse in early 2017, when the leader of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, a strongman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, began a violent purge of anyone suspected of being gay or transgender. 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 . Welcome to Chechnya (2020) Plot Showing all 3 items Jump to: Summaries (2) Synopsis (1) Summaries A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya. 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. 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. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. 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. 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'. A FILM BY DAVID FRANCE. 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 . Hearing the victims recount their stories is devastating. 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. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) David France at the Sundance Film Festival. HBO Max This documentary, which airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HBO, shows us whats happening to gay people in that Russian republic and the rest of the Russian Federation and its deeply disturbing. 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 Anya decides to escape, but that isn't so easy with the authorities soon hot on her trail. What we did was to borrow from the world of deepfakes and find this social justice use for it, he explained. 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). The Trump Family Behaves Exactly How Youd Expect in Documentary Subpoenaed by Jan. 6 Committee. Its footage that was shot as trophies by the people who committed those crimes. 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. My point in telling the story is to tell just enough of it so that its undeniable that its going on there. Now Streaming. Bogdan Left, Grisha Right in "Welcome to Chechnya". The effect is never quite seamless. 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. 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. In Welcome to Chechnya, the third film from Academy Award nominee David France, viewers are asked to relinquish the comforts of abstraction. 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. David France's HBO film shines light on the brutal campaign by officials in the semi-autonomous Russian region to imprison, torture and sometimes kill gay men. '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. All of the above. They talk about their injuries and show us bruises that havent yet healed. Read that word, and digest what it means. So I decided to lay low., Its not gone well for Anya. 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.