You can do anything with a face on screen these days, whether it’s shaving decades off with a digital scalpel or deepfaking it into unrecognizable oblivion. Usually this wizardry has the air of a stunt, a transformation pulled off merely because it’s possible. Never, however, have such effects proven as chillingly essential as they are in “Welcome to Chechnya,” a vital, pulse-quickening new documentary from journalist-turned-filmmaker David France that urgently lifts the lid on one of the most horrifying humanitarian crises of present times: the state-sanctioned purge of Lgbtq people in the eponymous southern Russian republic. Closely charting multiple missions to extract and protect brutalized victims of the regime, France collects the candid first-person perspectives that have proven difficult to come by in this climate of terror — thanks in large part to face-altering technology that keeps their identities hidden, but not their searing truth.
Premiering in competition at...
Premiering in competition at...
- 1/28/2020
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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 the country for peace and safety.
It’s very much of a piece with the earlier films from journalist-turned-filmmaker David France: His stirring, Oscar-nominated “How to Survive a Plague” showed how gay men and their allies in 1980s New York City stepped up to face the HIV/AIDS crisis in the face of government indifference, while “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” used the ongoing investigation into the death of a legendary trans activist to examine transphobia in the NYPD and other government institutions.
With “Chechnya,” France goes behind enemy lines in an ongoing crisis: the systematic beatings, torture and “honor killings” of Lgbt people under the Putin-backed regime of strongman dictator Ramzan Kadyrov. The...
It’s very much of a piece with the earlier films from journalist-turned-filmmaker David France: His stirring, Oscar-nominated “How to Survive a Plague” showed how gay men and their allies in 1980s New York City stepped up to face the HIV/AIDS crisis in the face of government indifference, while “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” used the ongoing investigation into the death of a legendary trans activist to examine transphobia in the NYPD and other government institutions.
With “Chechnya,” France goes behind enemy lines in an ongoing crisis: the systematic beatings, torture and “honor killings” of Lgbt people under the Putin-backed regime of strongman dictator Ramzan Kadyrov. The...
- 1/26/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
Over the course of his filmmaking career, David France has made urgent political documentaries about Lgbtq rights, first with the AIDS pandemic and the founders of Act Up (the Oscar-nominated “How to Survive a Plague”), then the first transgender rights activists (“The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson”). His third film, “Welcome to Chechnya,” completes what he dubs in a director’s statement his “outsider activism” trilogy. Using guerrilla filmmaking tactics to shoot inside the heavily policed region, “Welcome to Chechnya” uncovers the horrific state-sanctioned detainment, torture, and execution of Lgbtq Chechens, humanizing the victims while protecting their identities with groundbreaking VFX technology.
The film’s central figures are the activists who risk their own lives in order to help evacuate at-risk people from Chechnya. The stakes are beyond high as the film opens with David Isteev, head of Russia’s largest gay rights group The Russian Lgbt Network,...
The film’s central figures are the activists who risk their own lives in order to help evacuate at-risk people from Chechnya. The stakes are beyond high as the film opens with David Isteev, head of Russia’s largest gay rights group The Russian Lgbt Network,...
- 1/26/2020
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
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