And not just them, but their family members, too. 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.. 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? 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. 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 . After some chitchat, the women leave by taxi for the airport. IE 11 is not supported. Youre forced to reckon with the nature of identityhow it can cost someone their life. His method essentially involved filming unrelated subjects in a studio with a nine-camera array capturing their faces from all angles. What made the time right for the documentary to be released now? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. In Welcome to Chechnya, the third film from Academy Award nominee David France, viewers are asked to relinquish the comforts of abstraction. I was thankful we were able to capture that., For her part, Ivanova received some visitors after several expeditions for the film. Sometimes thats a tall order. According to Representative Billy Long, abortions, not guns, are the problem. He was tortured by. (Photo courtesy of Igor Myakotin/Welcome to Chechnya) Maxim Lapunov at the Sundance Film Festival. He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, 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. 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. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. Grade: B+ "Welcome to Chechnya" premiered at the Sundance. I was so involved in the technical work for the months leading up to Sundance that I hadnt stepped back to see the film. 'Welcome to Chechnya' Review: A look at state-sanctioned torture, rape and murder of homosexuals in Russia. Agents warned Ivanova she couldnt film. 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. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. These scenes dont tell us nearly as much as the scenes in which we hear people speak about their experiences firsthandas one young man does, detailing his torture to his boyfriend, with whom he is joyfully able to reunite. On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. His almost incredible sang froid was matched only by that of his colleague Olga Baranova. 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. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. 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. 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 . 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 . 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. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Many of the faces we see are actually the faces of people from outside Chechnya, who lent their likenesses to the film. You can try, Jon Stewart's Political Comedy 'Irresistible' Is A Condescending Attempt To Skewer Liberal Condescension, Olivier Assayas' Historical Thriller 'Wasp Network' Tells The True Story Of 1990s Cuban Espionage, Spike Lee's Vietnam Epic 'Da 5 Bloods' Uncovers Buried Bombs, Both Personal and Political. So I was following the footsteps of my heroes. His companions were two guides hed hired. "Welcome to Chechnya" es un urgente documental que destaca a valientes activistas rescatando a personas gay del exterminio en Chechenia. And in 70 countries across the globe where its still illegal to be gay. Read that word, and digest what it means. [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]. 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.. One young man is fleeing because while he is not a citizen of Chechnya, he has spent time detained in one of its prisons for being gayand upon his release back to Russia, he became a threat to a regime that would rather the world buy into its denialism. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival,[8] and screened at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. . Where do the new faces actually come from? Chechnya, there are no homosexuals. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. 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. 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. 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. Panetta recalled talking with her mother, who had sent her bad information about Covid-19. The activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. 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. The effect is never quite seamless. 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. 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. I decided not to use any special equipment or hidden camerasfor example, a camera in your eyeglasses. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. 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. The darkness was painfully visible throughout Welcome to Chechnya, but France somehow managed to close the film in light a beam, however tentative and hesitant, that nevertheless shone through with affirmation. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. 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 . 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). Be a witness. 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. (France did insist, however, on 4K for cinematic lift.). 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. Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that could come back to haunt them. For many, simply walking out of Chechnya isn't an option. They are tough. Nonetheless, a camera inside the cab keeps recording. In another, a woman is attacked by a relative who it's implied but not shown proceeds to bludgeon her to death. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. Like most of the victims in Welcome to Chechnya, Grishas identity is hidden with deep fake technology. Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted: "Magomed Tushayev, one of . 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. The next nail-biter is at the airports Passport Checkpoint. 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. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020 and was released on June 30, 2020, by HBO Films. Their identities are protected via a new form of digital masking, which similar to deepfake technology overlays the faces of others while preserving the camera subjects original expressions. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), also colloquially known as the Television Academy, is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the television industry in the United States.It is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization founded in 1946, the organization presents the Primetime Emmy Awards, an annual ceremony honoring achievement in U.S. primetime television. He wants you to see them. 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. 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. Anyone can read what you share. 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. 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. Nor did the editing and VFX suites in New York. For securitys sake, Ivanova needed to use a burner phone rather than her own. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. (Weve come a long way from slapping black bars over their eyes or sitting in a shadow on Dateline.) Theres a gasp-inducing moment when Grisha goes public and the digital augmentations drop away, revealing his real face for the first time. The most nerve-wracking sequence in David France's Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. What I learned from that story in The New Yorker was that the crimes that had been exposed earlier in the year hadnt stopped, that nothing about the exposure in the world media, nothing about the expressions of outrage from European leaders, nothing about the meek, near silence from the Trump administration had done anything to slow the campaign that was being carried out by the leadership in Chechnya against the LGBTQ community, France tells Variety. The activists dont know where she is, but, according to France, Theyve been told shes alive.. Training viewers to look for even the obvious signs would help, he said. 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Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday! They were keepsakes from these horrible events, and they were also deliverables. And it still is. It was a gay purge. 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 . 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. Chechen authorities let him go because he is not ethnically Chechen. If anything, the activists tell us, the women need more help escaping. So I became a selfie queen, says France. Then come the faces themselves, slightly soft, as they were in Martin Scorseses de-aged The Irishman. Smoking cigarettes, strategizing, looking nervous. (Courtesy of HBO) "Welcome to Chechnya" premieres Tuesday on HBO. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. 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. So last century. Another substitute face, this time of Joy A. Tomchin, was also used to disguise one of the Chechens in the film. A gay couple in Welcome to Chechnya. The faces were replaced in postproduction. Some strange people came to my flat and spoke with my mom. Its got a beautiful lens on it, says the director, but it looks like a toy. Anya and her car of dress-shoppers got through. Its footage that was shot as trophies by the people who committed those crimes. David France, left, and the face-capture producer Johnny Han watch a volunteer in the studio. The moment is extremely tense. Welcome To Chechnya (2020): Official Trailer | HBO. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) That is what the tyrannical leader Ramzan Kadyrov has decided. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Some of the men were released with the expectation that their own relatives would kill them, since the stigma of homosexuality runs deep in this ultra-conservative, primarily Muslim society. It's a bold gambit that may put off those who find it too duplicitous in the context of a documentary. 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). He covered the the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal and wrote the bestselling book Our Fathers, which was turned into a Showtime movie. That's David Isteev, a journalist turned activist at the start of Welcome to Chechnya, a devastating documentary about the Russian Federation republic's purge of its LGBTQ+ population. 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. It smiles, it cries in exactly the same way, but it is somebody elses face.. What our film proves is that this can be done in the right way., Deepfake Technology Enters the Documentary World, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/movies/deepfakes-documentary-welcome-to-chechnya.html. This is nonsense, he says. Anya's story is one of the main threads. 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. With little emotion, the young man explains his scars as his boyfriend touches those spots and says nothing. 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. welcome to chechnya what happened to anya are there tigers in andaman and nicobar islands? People there are killed and tortured for being gay, as described in scary detail within the film. 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 . 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. Reflecting on his participation in Anyas rescue, France says, I dont think Ive experienced anything as harrowing as that in my life. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. ET on HBO. Kadyrov and his security forces have been widely accused by international human rights groups of extrajudicial arrests, torture and killings. So theres a lot of work to be done.. The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. We have group therapy sessions about it to process the work that we had gone through.. Then its over, and Anya is free to go. 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. "We don't have such people here," declares Ramzan Kadyrov, chuckling . 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. Sign Up Now Welcome to Chechnya (HBO) Genres original, documentary Runtime 1 hr 47 min Release Year 2020 About This Movie

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