Welcome to Chechnya: Searing Documentary Exposes Violent Homophobia

Maxim Lapunov should be voted Advocate Magazine's Person of the Year or rather should have received this honor in 2017. He is the main protagonist of gay journalist/filmmaker David France's searing new brutal chilling expos� documentary, Welcome to Chechnya, which played at Frameline 44's virtual Pride weekend showcase and debuted on HBO June 30. A huge hit at Sundance, had Maxim been able to attend an actual Castro Theater screening he would have received a thunderous standing ovation.

The film's backdrop is the harrowing saga of the purging/war, via (electro)torture, beatings, and executions of LGBTQ people in Chechnya spearheaded by its Putin puppet leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, that began in 2017 and was revealed in a New Yorker article by Masha Gessen.

But France focuses on the fearless rescue activists David Isteev, crisis intervention coordinator for The Russian LGBT Network and Olga Baranova, director of the Moscow Community Center for LGBTI+ Initiatives, who run a shelter for endangered people and within two weeks they evacuate terrified runaways past airport security out of Chechnya for safe houses in Europe. Simultaneously difficult to watch, yet riveting nail-biting suspense, this film makes us appreciate, in this month of celebrating our country's independence and democratic ideals, the basic freedom just to survive.