Part of SFFILM Festival
Welcome to Chechnya
Description
David France’s vital new film uncovers extreme human-rights abuses against LGBTQ people in Chechnya. Profiling a group of Russian activists performing rescues and providing shelter for escaping refugees, the film hones in on two cases–a young Russian man, who can blow the lid off Chechnya’s persecution and a Chechen woman who is being held by family members who suspect she is lesbian. Though the film employs facial disguise technology to protect its subjects, what is revealed by these heroic whistleblowers is a nation’s unimpeded cruelty towards some of its citizens.
“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.” –Guy Lodge, Variety
David France is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times and New York magazine. His directing debut, How to Survive a Plague (Festival 2012), was nominated for a Best Documentary, Features Oscar. His second feature, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017), won the Freedom Award at LA Outfest.
Film Details
Language Russian, English, Chechen, French
Year 2020
Runtime 107
Country USA
Director David France
Producer Alice Henty, David France, Askold Kurov, Joy A. Tomchin
Editor Tyler H. Walk
Cinematographer Askold Kurov, Derek Wiesehahn
Music Evgueni Galperine, Sacha Galperine
Print Source
Public Square Films
info@welcometochechnya.com
https://www.welcometochechnya.com
