1999 - Chechen fighters clash with Russian troops on the Chechnya-Dagestan border; Chechen rebels carry out armed incursions into Dagestan in a bid to create an Islamic state..Moscow blames for . The target is Anya (a pseudonym), whose plight is revealed at the films start: Pleading for help in a phone call to Russian LGBT Network crisis response coordinator David Isteev, she explains that her uncle is threatening to reveal her lesbianism to her fathera high-ranking government officialunless she has sex with him. I asked them if they would lend their faces as a human shield to protect the identities of the folks Id filmed. He denies the torture outright, in other words; so does the Kremlin. But also, theyre inspiring stories, I think., (How to Survive a Plague is streaming on Amazon Prime; The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is streaming on Netflix.). Theyre one of Hollywoods brightest starsand most troubled actors. 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. Anya arrives and Ivanova films the meetup surreptitiously on a GoPro. Distressing. 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. IE 11 is not supported. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. Even Facebook, not known for its strict policing of content, pledged to ban deepfakes in January. 197 posts. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. 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. Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted: "Magomed Tushayev, one of . I think that documentary films have the power to affect and encourage and augment and foment social change, France said. And it still is. 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. The moment is extremely tense. ET on HBO. Documentarian David France faced an unenviable challenge with his latest film, "Welcome to Chechnya.". We dont talk about this much, but were still in therapy about it. 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. Maybe it shouldnt be. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya. Director David Frances 2012 How to Survive a Plague was to my mind one of the decades finest documentaries. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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.. 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.. The cruelty is medieval, but the time is now. Now we get to witness an actual extraction from Chechnyathe mechanics, the risks and the bravery involved. People and footage had to be protected at all costs. 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. The films production was obviously clandestine, guerilla filmmaking to a tee, with director France and his cinematographer Askold Kurov seeking invisibility as they worked with handheld cameras, and catching what they could on phones when that was the only way to operate. Welcome to Chechnya is a grimly ironic title for a documentary that plays like a chilling undercover thriller. And as in France's first film, the people. Jimmy Kimmel Roasts Fragile Snowflake Donald Trump for Allegedly Trying to Censor Him, Ghostwriting Gloria Swanson: The Strange, Sexually Charged Genesis of a Legendary Autobiography, Ezra Millers Messiah Delusions: Inside. They have grim stories: of being captured by police, of getting questioned over their phone contacts, of being driven to those contacts homes and forced to aid the police in their respective capture. They are heartbreaking. Six months pass, a visa elusive. Like most of the victims in Welcome to Chechnya, Grishas identity is hidden with deep fake technology. 2022 International Documentary Association. For Welcome to Chechnya, he set up a secret editing suite and remained entirely offline while on the job. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) Like all great political documentaries, Welcome to Chechnya is a call to action. 10 Chechen gays get tortured and the whole world cares. Thats where he was seized by the security agents. It was an insane proposition, but the cover story worked, France says. Tushayev was responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering LGBTQ+ people. Where do the new faces actually come from? And the world lets them get away with iteven despite documentaries like this. Anya's story is one of the main threads. That's how the moscow duchy looked like in 14th century. The main camera, operated by Kurov, was a Sony FDR-AX100 handycam. 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 . For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. 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. Being there made me feel like Id been sent back to the French Resistance. Before Anya even set foot in the restaurant, Ivanova got a warning scrawled on a napkin. 21 . 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. Theres a clip, in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya, of a 2017 interview with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. 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. Training viewers to look for even the obvious signs would help, he said. Homosexuality and gender nonconformity have long been frowned upon in Chechen society. 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 effect is never quite seamless. They thought I was some sort of crazy nut.. 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. The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. 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. 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. Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. 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. Managing to extricate men and women from there, they looked after them in safe houses in Moscow and elsewhere, before finally in the best outcome, at least relocating them to where they could live in safety. There's no time for sweeping shots of foreign. This is the kind of film destined to be on "essential" documentary lists for decades to come, the kind we will look back on as critical documentation of a historic wrongdoing. hide caption. I love her. Another of these young people tries to slit their wrists. 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. In another, a woman is attacked by a relative who it's implied but not shown proceeds to bludgeon her to death. Post author: Post published: May 11, 2022 Post category: orchard lake united hockey Post comments: famous asian psychologists famous asian psychologists 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. 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. Follow. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. Its practically seamless more convincing than the de-aging in The Irishman, anyway and points to entire new worlds of possibility in documentary footage preserving peoples anonymity. 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. 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. I wanted you to feel what he felt at that moment, France said. Frances movie, which premieres on HBO Tuesday, is largely focused on a Moscow-based group of activists attempting to help these survivors flee the country. . "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. He also long covered the AIDS crisis, about which he wrote the award-winning book How to Survive a Plague, adapted from his Oscar-nominated 2012 documentary of the same title (which also debuted at Sundance). 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. Its footage that was shot as trophies by the people who committed those crimes. '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. 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. 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 then theres Maxim Lapunov, who came to Moscow after being released from prison, where he was tortured for several weeks in 2017. Since 2016, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has led a pogrom against the . Welcome to Chechnya is a blisteringly painful watch, one that imparts new meaning on the practice of bearing witness. He called it an underblur or halo, intentionally added so youll be aware of the manipulation. And this changes nothing. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. I think the point's been made and now it's time to take . Agents warned Ivanova she couldnt film. (Before getting out of the cab, he dropped his own iPhone X on the floor.) I want them to feel responsible for doing something to help stop it., Donate to the newsroom now. But still these elegantly edited cinematic set-pieces are interrupted by blunt visions of horror trophy videos captured on Chechen citizens cell phones of savage beatings, gang rapes and even a stoning. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. That is what the tyrannical leader Ramzan Kadyrov has decided. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. So there was always this dark shadow of the violence that hung over every moment of the time that I was with them.. 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.. 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). 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. In Russia, this equipment needs certain certifications and permissions. 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. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. 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. 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. 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. All Rights Reserved. So I was following the footsteps of my heroes. His companions were two guides hed hired. 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.. 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. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. 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. This is nonsense, he says. In a sense, Welcome to Chechnya is an applied special effect that lasts an entire movie. 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. [1] Shes just fearless, says France. Its a matter of trusting the process.. David Frances revelatory film may have been subtitled The Gay Purge, but from the start it was clear this wasnt just another documentary from Russia charting the increasing pressure faced by that countrys queer community. 'Welcome to Chechnya' Review: A look at state-sanctioned torture, rape and murder of homosexuals in Russia. 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. I want people to be invested in it. 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 . (France did insist, however, on 4K for cinematic lift.). Anya is just a pseudonym for is one of the many who have fled the Chechen Republic as they faced persecution by the government due to their orientation. 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). A FILM BY DAVID FRANCE. 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. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? Among those aided by the network is 21-year-old "Anya," the daughter of a high-ranking Chechen official. 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. Appalling. "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. It said that people in the caf saw the camera and had become nervous about it, that I should hide it better, Ivanova recounts. Anya and her car of dress-shoppers got through. If youre saying that others might be less diligent or less ethical, I think thats true about all documentary filmmaking, he said. There are many people not identified at all, but the doc includes disturbing and graphic footage of them being beaten and tortured. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. Weve heard historical context, seen horrific trophy videos of assault and murder, and spent time in the secret shelter where queer refugees await visas. And hes drawing some hope from the ongoing protests against racism taking place across the United States and around the world. 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