The mistreatment and persecution of the LGBTQ community in Chechnya has been an ongoing issue, but in March 2017 a glaring spotlight was put on the Russian republic as reports of gay and bisexual m…
In a place where there are no protections for those in the LGBTQ community and where they are openly mistreated and oppressed, France already had a volatile landscape to navigate. In the documentary, he follows a group of undercover activists in Chechnya who risk their lives to rescue victims and provide them with safe houses and visa assistance to escape an oppressive system.
France is no stranger to using his platform to amplify LGTBQ history and address pertinent issues that continue to impact the community. For his feature directorial debut, France helmed the eye-opening, Oscar-nominated, which gave audiences a look at the early years of the AIDS epidemic and how the activist groups ACT UP and TAG affected change. His follow up docu,revisited the LGBTQ activist and icon’s death which was ruled as a suicide but many believe it was a murder.
DEADLINE: The news about the mistreatment and abuse of the LGBTQ community in Chechnya has been going on for some time, but when did you decide to make a documentary about it?I was concerned about what was happening in Chechnya from the original news reports back in early 2017. But by the middle of the summer, we learned that the atrocities there and the horrors there were still ongoing. We had heard nothing out of the new U.S.
We were just sitting quietly in those shelters, just observing people as they got their footing and began the difficult work of reckoning with what had happened to them as well as the terrible uncertainty of the life ahead. There was so much on their plate: emotional, psychological, political and diplomatic work. We were able to fade away into the woodwork.
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