In another, a woman is attacked by a relative who it's implied but not shown proceeds to bludgeon her to death. And everybody understood that their own testimony was essential to bringing this atrocity back into the public domain. France didnt want to talk about any threats he or other members of the production team might have received. 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.' The website's critics consensus reads: "An illuminating and urgent call to action, Welcome to Chechnya portrays the horrors of the mass persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in the Chechen Republic with tenacity and tenderness. 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. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Then its over, and Anya is free to go. 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. Welcome to Chechnya (HBO): An inside look at a group of activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ campaign in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Disgraceful. He was twisting balloons into these elaborate sculptures and selling them to people in front of the main mall in Grozny, Chechnya. Chechnya, there are no homosexuals. I was thankful we were able to capture that., For her part, Ivanova received some visitors after several expeditions for the film. 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. (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.) 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. 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. Its not a story about me, France says simply. 2022 International Documentary Association. France included. From the start, a disclaimer states that certain subjects have been digitally disguised for their safety. 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. Want to get a head start on your Oscar predictions? Youre forced to reckon with the nature of identityhow it can cost someone their life. 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. 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. Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France follows the activists who expose Russia's war on gays. But there is not, of course, footage of them actually being tortured. When transferring data from a card, for instance, that computer would have its Wi-Fi card removed and Bluetooth disabled. 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. 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. With no help from the Kremlin and only faint global condemnation, activists take matters into their own hands. 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. Its a matter of trusting the process.. Welcome to Chechnya is a blisteringly painful watch, one that imparts new meaning on the practice of bearing witness. Their cover story is that Anya is meeting two family friends who are taking her dress-shopping. "Welcome to Chechnya" is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it. We see some of those abuses in the movie's most disturbing footage, much of it secretly filmed on cell phones and spliced into the film in brief jolts. But politicians have become targets, too. 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. For Anyas rescue operation, the Sony stayed home. (All refugees are assigned pseudonyms, such as Grisha and Anya.) 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. Oscar; Crticas; . Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that could come back to haunt them. To feel the audience responding to his story gave him confidence that the sacrifices that hes made, and hes going through, have a purpose., Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. Activist David Isteev, left, and a cohort organize an escape in a scene from 'Welcome to Chechnya.'. These are the images being broadcast by Russian propaganda channels, leveraging the very presence of Chechen. 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. For Welcome to Chechnya, he set up a secret editing suite and remained entirely offline while on the job. 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. 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. [9][10], It was shown at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2020. To remain inconspicuous, only amateur camera gear was used on the film. So when I met him, he was an open, generous figure who allowed me to share his journey with him in the most profound way., In order to hide the identities of the residents in the safe house, France used technology to replace their faces with those of 22 LGBTQ activists in New York City. [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. 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. 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 . 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. (Courtesy of HBO) "Welcome to Chechnya" premieres Tuesday on HBO. The face moves exactly the same way. Shes just fearless, says France. The mere presence of. 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.. (A good number of the refugees wind up in Canada, while to the surprise of absolutely nobody the Trump administration has yet to admit any into the U.S.) Isteev is introduced taking a cellphone call with the camera circling around him like the hero in an action movie, one of many times France borrows the visual language of Hollywood thrillers to hammer home his storys urgency. Few people can publicly attest to this, because anyone who speaks out against Kadyrov becomes an automatic target of the Chechen government. He made it his job to bring joy to people. 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. (Before getting out of the cab, he dropped his own iPhone X on the floor.) People were "disappeared.". Looking for more? Homosexuality and gender nonconformity have long been frowned upon in Chechen society. And they signed on as an act of activism.. 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). Deepfake Technology Enters the Documentary World. Training viewers to look for even the obvious signs would help, he said. They talk about their injuries and show us bruises that havent yet healed. 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. Welcome to Chechnya chronicles the persecution of LGBTQ youth in this ultra-conservative society. Welcome to Chechnya: Directed by David France. 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. "[12] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[13]. Appalling. Maybe shocking. After the initial gains of the Russian army, the Chechen rebels demonstrated a . His method essentially involved filming unrelated subjects in a studio with a nine-camera array capturing their faces from all angles. But its much more meaningful. Everyone in Russia is buried in their phones, says France, so Kurov following suit wouldnt raise any suspicions. Filmmaker David France goes inside what can only be called a genocide that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has unleashed against his LGBTQ citizens. A checkpoint is en route. '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. 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). Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov is a Putin stooge straight out of central casting, coyly egging on the atrocities in his ridiculous weightlifter shirt. He was tortured by. Welcome To Chechnya (2020): Official Trailer | HBO. Im still processing, and so is the rest of the crew. Like all great political documentaries, Welcome to Chechnya is a call to action. 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. All rights reserved. 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. Welcome to Chechnya notes that, under the Trump administration, the United States had not accepted any refugees from Chechnya or the Russian Federation who were fleeing persecution, torture and death because of their sexual orientation. 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