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. 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. 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). After six months of quarantine in a safe house awaiting a visa, she lost hope and left. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. (The Get Out director Jordan Peele tried to raise awareness with an eerie deepfake of Barack Obama.) The next nail-biter is at the airports Passport Checkpoint. 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. 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. None of that is included in the film. (The films cinematographer, Askold Kurov, stepped aside for this mission since its cover story required a female camera operator.). Everyones nervous, knowing that at any minute Anyas name could appear on a federal wanted list. David Frances HBO documentary about Chechnyas anti-LGBT pogrom is brutal, but necessary. 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. All rights reserved. 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 camerawork is rough and ragged; the sense of menace is palpable. 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 . The step . Their visual information was married on a deep-learning level with the Chechen footage. Theres a clip, in David Frances Welcome to Chechnya, of a 2017 interview with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. The Montreal Mafia Murders: Blood, Gore, Cannolis, and Hockey Bags, A Comprehensive Guide to Why a Ron DeSantis Presidency Would Be as Terrifying as a Trump One. People felt for them in a very emotional way, and showed it, France said. And making people aware of whats happening with a film like Welcome to Chechnya is the first step. (France did insist, however, on 4K for cinematic lift.). Now we get to witness an actual extraction from Chechnyathe mechanics, the risks and the bravery involved. David wanted to tell the story as quickly and urgently as possible; there are enough examples, definitely. The activists dont know where she is, but, according to France, Theyve been told shes alive.. Before Anya even set foot in the restaurant, Ivanova got a warning scrawled on a napkin. It comes midway through the HBO documentary that premieres June 30, so weve already met the Russian LGBT activists who help Chechen gays and lesbians flee the republics anti-gay purge. Looking for more? And as in France's first film, the people. He denies the torture outright, in other words; so does the Kremlin. Agents warned Ivanova she couldnt film. Will a documentary that expressly embraces the technique help matters? When transferring data from a card, for instance, that computer would have its Wi-Fi card removed and Bluetooth disabled. 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. 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. After ineffective attempts at funding Chechen opposition groups, a Russian invasion began on December 11, 1994. Be a witness. 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. This technology allowed us to just stretch the facesover the images that I shot in the film. 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. When he went to visit a guy he met online, policemen hiding in the bathroom arrested and detained him. 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. I appeared to be smiling at my own image while actually grabbing shots over his shoulder. France is an award-winning journalist who has been a war correspondent in Central America. I said Yes, okay! and continued shooting after a moment. 197 posts. Welcome To Chechnya. He made it his job to bring joy to people. [3] The approach is a "game changer in identity protection," according to Documentary Magazine, and a brand new tool for documentary filmmakers. I felt the lack of any sort of safety net, and that was very frightening. 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. When he was captured on the streets of Grozny, he had been selling balloon art. . And the world lets them get away with iteven despite documentaries like this. IE 11 is not supported. . In Welcome to Chechnya, the third film from Academy Award nominee David France, viewers are asked to relinquish the comforts of abstraction. 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. All Rights Reserved. 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. 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. Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, tweeted: "Magomed Tushayev, one of . 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. Chechnya is bordered by Russia proper on the north, Dagestan republic on the east and southeast, the country of Georgia on the southwest, and Ingushetiya republic on the west. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. Say hello to deepfake. Harrowing and brutal, Welcome to Chechnya, France's third film, is all the more prescient right now. The three films Ive made are about a kind of a radical kind of queer activism, that I think really leads the world in bringing a kind of a love-based activism to these really awful issues and making a difference, France said. 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.. Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. 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. 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. And then theres Maxim Lapunov, who came to Moscow after being released from prison, where he was tortured for several weeks in 2017. One of the most powerful moments in the documentary, "Welcome to Chechnya," premiering June 30 at 10:00 pm on HBO, has a young gay man recalling his arrest and torture. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. I want people to be invested in it. Filmmaker David France goes inside what can only be called a genocide that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has unleashed against his LGBTQ citizens. Everybody understood that this needed to be exposed, France said. and Anya, a young queer woman from Grozny, who wants to flee her powerful Chechen family. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. 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. From the start, a disclaimer states that certain subjects have been digitally disguised for their safety. 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. It's a bold gambit that may put off those who find it too duplicitous in the context of a documentary. Im still processing, and so is the rest of the crew. 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. I want people to know whats going on there. It was by far the most emotional journey Ive ever been on, said France in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. So I was following the footsteps of my heroes. His companions were two guides hed hired. Although some didnt. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Hearing the victims recount their stories is devastating. Welcome to Chechnya is not easy to watch. Isteev had dropped it there on his way out; according to plan, he and the backup team left right before Anyas arrival. According to Representative Billy Long, abortions, not guns, are the problem. 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. Tushayev was responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering LGBTQ+ people. 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. Welcome to Chechnya follows the stories of some of the gay men and women attempting to move to safety. (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. 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. But its much more meaningful. Finding the right word to describe Welcome to Chechnya isnt easy. 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. 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. David France, left, and the face-capture producer Johnny Han watch a volunteer in the studio. Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. Shameful. In Russia, this equipment needs certain certifications and permissions. Ryan Laney, Frances visual effects supervisor and a 30-year veteran whose credits include Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), persuaded the director that a deep-learning computer process was the easiest answer, even on a documentarys tight budget. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020 and was released on June 30, 2020, by HBO Films. France didnt want to talk about any threats he or other members of the production team might have received. Youre forced to reckon with the nature of identityhow it can cost someone their life. 21 . 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. 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.. Weve heard historical context, seen horrific trophy videos of assault and murder, and spent time in the secret shelter where queer refugees await visas. (President Vladimir Putins government is itself decidedly anti-gay, and has turned a blind eye to the kidnappings, torture and murder of the Kadyrov regime.) Six months pass, a visa elusive. This happened shortly after Frontal journalists published their investigation Forced Adoption: The Missing Children of Kherson on the social network. 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. The activists intercepted numerous videos, captured on cell phones, of people being tortured, attacked on the street and even raped. 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. 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. The people chronicled in Frances film have pictures on their phones documenting the torture they suffered, some of which we see. To avoid exposing their work, it was shot in secret, using hidden cameras, cell phones, GoPros, and handycams. Thanks to a toxic brew of nationalistic fervor, Putins gay propaganda law and some good old-fashioned religious fundamentalism, homosexuals have been scapegoated as disgraces only blood can cleanse, in many cases becoming victims of honor-killings by their own families. 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 . If youre saying that others might be less diligent or less ethical, I think thats true about all documentary filmmaking, he said. The operation begins in a fast-food restaurant. He covered the the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal and wrote the bestselling book Our Fathers, which was turned into a Showtime movie. 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). Courtroom porn and social media have turned innocent bystanders into a mass of mudslingers. The computer did not have the capacity to touch the internet, France says. In a sense, Welcome to Chechnya is an applied special effect that lasts an entire movie. Documentarian David France faced an unenviable challenge with his latest film, "Welcome to Chechnya.". 'Welcome to Chechnya' Review: A look at state-sanctioned torture, rape and murder of homosexuals in Russia. Twitter has blocked the account of the Frontal program, which is aired on the German ZDF TV channel. War brought Vladimir Putin to power in 1999. ET on HBO. Being there made me feel like Id been sent back to the French Resistance. This melding of techniques resulted in an illusion that received high marks from a Dartmouth study group researching the so-called uncanny valley, a metric of empathy for nonhuman faces. Some strange people came to my flat and spoke with my mom. Read that word, and digest what it means. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. Training viewers to look for even the obvious signs would help, he said. 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. You can just put something like a book on top of the GoPro and it becomes invisible. She adds, You can always tell them you didnt understand.. Anya and her car of dress-shoppers got through. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Deepfake Technology Enters the Documentary World. All of the above. The mere presence of. Thanks to the extraordinary access attained by France and company, were provided passenger seat views of daring midnight escapes and hair-raising trips through customs, with a percolating electronic score out of a Michael Mann picture. Shes just fearless, says France. 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.. May 31, 2021 In Southeastern Europe, in a small Russian-controlled Republic called Chechnya, there is a brutal genocide taking place. One in particular sticks with me: a pop singer named Zelim Bakaev, who disappeared in 2017 and is thought to been captured, tortured, and murdered after attending his sisters wedding. 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Thats where he was seized by the security agents. France even had a decoy phone with proof: downloaded soccer-fan photos and videos, stats about the Egyptian team, vistas with his tour guides. 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 . After some chitchat, the women leave by taxi for the airport. His bigoted policies and authoritarian behavior make him just as bad a pick for the top job in Washington. In one video, an incarcerated man is sexually assaulted off-camera by police. It was very cumbersome, but necessary to keep my end of the promise, France said. 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. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. And then theres the evidence we see for ourselves: cell phone footage of people being beaten and harassed. And hes drawing some hope from the ongoing protests against racism taking place across the United States and around the world. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. 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. 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. It was a gay purge. Chechnyas leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. Their operation, run from a discreet location that becomes a haven for escapees-in-wait, receives about 25 new refugees a month. Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's brutal leader, making a defiant promise to seize Kyiv. Chechnya runs itself as basically an autonomous entity, with a corrupt, oligarchic power structure . 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. 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). Kadyrov and his security forces have been widely accused by international human rights groups of extrajudicial arrests, torture and killings. (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. Its a huge enterprise but I think it works, he added. [1] Theres been an enormous amount of such spy cases since 2014.. It was my greatest fear: that I could blow up the whole operation. Maybe it shouldnt be. 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. That tell is important, Laney said. Frances movie is very much an on-the-ground account of these happenings. 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. 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. Patricia Thomson is a longtime film journalist and contributing writer for American Cinematographer. There's no time for sweeping shots of foreign. She has never been at home alone before but must wait indoors, as the activists try to arrange for any country to take her in. I love her. Bogdan Left, Grisha Right in "Welcome to Chechnya". 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. Welcome to Chechnya follows the work of the Russian LGBTQ Network, an activist group working to combat genocide in Chechnya. Program, which is aired on the German ZDF TV channel and left blocked the of! Words ; so does the Kremlin operation, run from a discreet location that becomes haven! 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