What we did was to borrow from the world of deepfakes and find this social justice use for it, he explained. 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. But politicians have become targets, too. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. France, a former Newsweek editor turned filmmaker (How to Survive a Plague, 2012), bristles at the term, a portmanteau of computer-assisted deep learning and fake., Deepfake changes what people say and do, France said. 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. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. We have group therapy sessions about it to process the work that we had gone through.. What made the time right for the documentary to be released now? The most nerve-wracking sequence in David France's Welcome to Chechnya is, without doubt, the rescue of Anya. 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. In one video, an incarcerated man is sexually assaulted off-camera by police. Read that word, and digest what it means. 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. A gay couple in Welcome to Chechnya. The faces were replaced in postproduction. . So there was always this dark shadow of the violence that hung over every moment of the time that I was with them.. (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. Plans start at $9.99/month. And making people aware of whats happening with a film like Welcome to Chechnya is the first step. 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. 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. 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. And then to see it with an audience and to be able to introduce the people who were in the film to that audience it was a very gratifying experience.. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. 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. Weve heard historical context, seen horrific trophy videos of assault and murder, and spent time in the secret shelter where queer refugees await visas. (Courtesy of HBO) "Welcome to Chechnya" premieres Tuesday on HBO. 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" es un urgente documental que destaca a valientes activistas rescatando a personas gay del exterminio en Chechenia. 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. Since 2016, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has led a pogrom against the . 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. Even Facebook, not known for its strict policing of content, pledged to ban deepfakes in January. 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. 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. 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. We come to care about them. It said that people in the caf saw the camera and had become nervous about it, that I should hide it better, Ivanova recounts. The story in Chechnya is unfortunately still ongoing. Reflecting on his participation in Anyas rescue, France says, I dont think Ive experienced anything as harrowing as that in my life. France included. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing, U.S. And that hasnt changed since the documentary was completed. 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. Anya decides to escape, but that isn't so easy with the authorities soon hot on her trail. 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.. 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. Anyone can read what you share. He covered the the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal and wrote the bestselling book Our Fathers, which was turned into a Showtime movie. ET on HBO. I want people to be invested in it. I come from a news background, so I love the idea of making something that really could have happened, said Francesca Panetta, co-director of the video. The fate of his call for investigation would be depressingly familiar. [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. If youre saying that others might be less diligent or less ethical, I think thats true about all documentary filmmaking, he said. Its a matter of trusting the process.. Welcome to Chechnya is a terrifying documentary about the gay purges happening in Chechnya, Russia. Welcome To Chechnya (2020): Official Trailer | HBO. Their operation, run from a discreet location that becomes a haven for escapees-in-wait, receives about 25 new refugees a month. I wanted you to feel what he felt at that moment, France said. Bogdan Left, Grisha Right in "Welcome to Chechnya". 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. Whats not obvious in the filmthough not on purposeis that this shot was taken from the backup teams taxi, not Anyas. So theres a lot of work to be done.. Together with various support initiatives, they had come to oversee a network that had arisen almost spontaneously back in 2017 to respond to what was happening in Chechnya. The story that it followed had started back in 2017, with a crack-down by the authorities in the southern republic of Chechnya that saw widespread police torture of gay men; in a society where concepts of family shame and honour killing remain absolutely real, victims were then handed over to their families, most probably to be murdered by them, the same fate awaiting women as well. The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. After ineffective attempts at funding Chechen opposition groups, a Russian invasion began on December 11, 1994. 212 following. Welcome to Chechnya. A film about persecuted gay and lesbian Chechens uses digital manipulation to guard their identities without losing their humanity. When transferring data from a card, for instance, that computer would have its Wi-Fi card removed and Bluetooth disabled. 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. 21 . welcome to chechnya what happened to anya are there tigers in andaman and nicobar islands? So last century. Sometimes thats a tall order. 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. When the documentarian David France decided to chronicle the anti-gay and lesbian purges that had unleashed a wave of fear and violence in Chechnya, he needed more than just a camera. They were horrible stories and theres no doubt that they were real, France, an Oscar-nominated activist filmmaker, said. (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. Would you like to receive event invitations, funding news, and other updates from the International Documentary Association? 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. 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. His second documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017), focuses on a self-described drag queen and one of the leaders of the Stonewall uprising whose death in 1992 was ruled a suicide by police despite considerable evidence she was killed. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. From Academy Award-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson) comes Welcome to Chechnya, a powerful and eye-opening documentary about a. All rights reserved. Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger 7. 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. On the other end of the line is Anya, a young lesbian whose father is a big muckity-muck in the Chechen government. What was a very expensive proposition has become even more expensive. Shes just fearless, says France. It was my greatest fear: that I could blow up the whole operation. 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.. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020 and was released on June 30, 2020, by HBO Films. 2023 Cond Nast. '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. So she held the GoPro low, shielding it with her other arm, or made sure to tuck it behind a coffee cup. 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. He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. Nonetheless, a camera inside the cab keeps recording. Six months pass, a visa elusive. 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. Heinous. 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. So I was following the footsteps of my heroes. His companions were two guides hed hired. 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 airs June 30 at 7 p.m. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. 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. A reckoning is essential for all of the crimes against human rights the smaller, less consequential ones like name-calling, the ones that are life altering and certainly the most extreme examples, like what we see happening in Chechnya, where its still going on, France said. The unrelated subjects were mostly queer activists in New York who I found on Instagram and elsewhere, France said. It isnt as dramatic as a pulse-pounding scene at the airport, waiting for passport approvals and hoping everyones cover story works out. This is nonsense, he says. 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. 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. 'Welcome to Chechnya' Review: A look at state-sanctioned torture, rape and murder of homosexuals in Russia. 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+ . For Welcome to Chechnya, he set up a secret editing suite and remained entirely offline while on the job. Panetta recalled talking with her mother, who had sent her bad information about Covid-19. 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. A checkpoint is en route. The piece will go live on July 20 at moondisaster.org. [2], Further complicating the production of the film was the need to protect the identities of interviewees. But I also want people to know what the conditions are for LGBTQ people around the globeThere are still 70 countries where its a crime to be queer, and eight of those countries, and several other semi-autonomous regions like Chechnya is, consider it a crime worthy of the death penalty., As international borders are closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the activists in Moscow need even more help. 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. Oscar; Crticas; . Say hello to deepfake. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival,[8] and screened at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. And then theres the evidence we see for ourselves: cell phone footage of people being beaten and harassed. Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. Be a witness. People there are killed and tortured for being gay, as described in scary detail within the film. Chechen forces successfully raided Russian-held Grozny for weapons in March. hide caption. Instead of masking or blurring their faces, theyre replaced digitally with a different face but the replacement images carry all the emotion of the victims. They talk about their injuries and show us bruises that havent yet healed. Thats a lot of coordination: a lot of work to secure visas and safe havens abroad while keeping these people safe in the interim. Its got a beautiful lens on it, says the director, but it looks like a toy. The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. 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. 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. It was Grishas particular situation that brought the film's action into direct contact with officialdom. People were "disappeared.". 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. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. In a sense, Welcome to Chechnya is an applied special effect that lasts an entire movie. We dont talk about this much, but were still in therapy about it. It smiles, it cries in exactly the same way, but it is somebody elses face.. 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. After the initial gains of the Russian army, the Chechen rebels demonstrated a . For security reasons, these individuals are introduced with aliases, and their circumstances and whereabouts are left deliberately vague. Members of the LGBTQ+ community are being systematically hunted, detained, tortured, and executed by Chechen authorities, civilians, and their own family members. There is, for example, the case of a woman they call Anya, whose father is a high-ranking official in Chechnya and whose uncle has threatened to tell her father about her sexualitya death sentenceunless she sleeps with him. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) The plan was for Ivanova to control her GoPro with a smartphone app, like Kurov did with his Sony. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. The activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. Welcome to Chechnya, directed by David France and produced by Alice Henty, David France, Askold Kurov, and Joy A. Tomchin, 2020, 107 minutes. Chechnya runs itself as basically an autonomous entity, with a corrupt, oligarchic power structure . That tell is important, Laney said. Movie. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. Now we get to witness an actual extraction from Chechnyathe mechanics, the risks and the bravery involved. Appalling. Catch up on the years best movies, whether in theaters or now streaming at home. Now, it must bring him down Jonathan Littell Putin believed he could invade Ukraine because everything we failed to do over the last 22 years taught him. The step . 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. Many who survived imprisonment have fled to Moscow, where they live in a safe house while seeking political asylum in other countries. Republican Congressman Blames Mass Shootings on Women Having Rights. 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. Cab keeps recording their circumstances and whereabouts are Left deliberately vague is a terrifying documentary about the gay purges in. 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