Welcome to Chechnya, the unnerving new documentary by filmmaker David France, stopped playing in my living room a full hour ago and I’m still trying to shake it.
That may take some time, considering the events of the film — the kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of LGBTQ men and women in Chechnya and the efforts to rescue them — are still happening as you read this.Imagine if the mortal threat faced by the AIDS activists in France’s Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague wasn’t a virus.
Imagine it was a knock at the door.Those of us who are LGBTQ and grew up with implicits threats of violence have feelings of unsafety installed in our psyche, and Welcome to Chechnya will push those buttons almost immediately.