Welcome to Chechnya

2020

Action / Documentary

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 100% · 74 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 75% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.9/10 10 3413 3.4K

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Plot summary

This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.

Director

Top cast

Olga Baranova as Self - Director, Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives
David Isteev as Self - Crisis Response Coordinator, The Russian LGBT Network
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
986.66 MB
1280*720
Russian 2.0
TV-MA
Subtitles us  es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 47 min
Seeds ...
1.98 GB
1920*1080
Russian 5.1
TV-MA
Subtitles us  es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 47 min
Seeds 3

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by CinemaSerf 7 / 10

At times this is quite an harrowing documentary

At times this is quite an harrowing documentary to watch as the intimate style of photography illustrates well the persecution of homosexuality in the breakaway eponymous Russian Republic. With President Putin's administration in Moscow denying any systematic abuse of these people, it's left to the local bully-boy governor Ramzan Kadyrov to deny that there are any gay folks in Chechnya and if there are, then they are diluting the pure bloodlines and out to get out. The methods to which the thugs will go to attack their quarry are quite inventive. They use social media to find a victim then use their own contacts and chats to find others - all with a view to beating them to within an inch of their lives then dumping the traumatised and battered people with stark warnings to leave. The narrative here shows the efforts made by various bodies trying to help, but who are themselves facing at best indifference and at worst downright hostility from the national authorities whose complicity in this "cleansing" is only very thinly disguised. The sense of peril faced by these people is well presented and the fact that many have their faces pixellated does bring home the real dangers faced from a vigilante element of society that cares not remotely for any human rights or liberties. It's one of those irrational hatreds that's been drummed into them and that sums up the archetypal bully perfectly. The fleeing characters involved are fearful and terrified half the time, but that doesn't mean that they are going to give up their fight. Even when faced with brutality, they are still determined to serve for equality and freedom under the law. Thing is, those in power simply alter or blur the law to make it even harder for them to achieve basic safety let alone justice. Not an easy watch, but well worth it.
Reviewed by russell-415-618666 9 / 10

More inspiring than disheartening

I've read a bit about Chechnya and the brutality of its regime and recall the stories of its brutal crackdown against LGBT people {stories which rarely make the news now) so I was expecting this doco to be a hard slog. The makers were deft at taking us on the underground railway of the network which saves gay and lesbian people by sneaking them out of Chechnya. We see the best qualities of humanity in the folk who risk so much to help others from being persecuted for being who they are. I was worried there'd be too many descriptions of torture and bashings etc. but they were just enough to give a sense of the horrors being committed. It was disheartening to hear how the people doing good are finding it harder to get asylum for the threatened. It's ad if the world is turning a blind eye. The film presents a forceful argument that persecution of a group in society is an ever present threat when leaders have impunity to express their dictatorial side: looking at you Putin and Trump.

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