WELCOME TO CHECHNYA comes with the highest of content warnings.... It should traumatize us into action. Anything less would be too easy to brush away. The images seen will sear into the mind.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 18, 2024

The balance between the macro-political perspective with the more intimate personal stories is well-executed, giving the full context of what these people are going through and the sense of urgency felt in their desperate situations.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 5, 2022

An urgent call to arms.

| May 19, 2022

This movie features a real-life spy story unfolding right before our eyes. Try to watch and not hold your breath in places.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 20, 2022

An immersive document of a loosely structured group specializing in helping Chechen and Russian gays and lesbians escape to other parts of the world, Welcome to Chechnya is an intense experience that left me shaken at just how high the stakes are.

| Sep 10, 2021

David France has, once again, highlighted great injustice perpetrated against Queer people. Now, the world just needs to sit up and listen to this Great Whistleblower.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 31, 2021

Sometimes there really is nothing else to say about a film, except that it is a harrowing, tough, worthy and near-exhausting watch. And yet, you'll be glad you made the effort and took the time.

| Jul 6, 2021

Feels all too real.

| Original Score: 4.0/5.0 | Feb 25, 2021

Welcome to Chechnya is a stunner not just because of what it shows, but for its clear implication that what is portrayed is barely a fraction of the mass terror currently taking place.

| Feb 2, 2021

This documentary shows the horror of what happens when the power of society, customs and religion are all focused on eliminating a certain segment of the population.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 18, 2021

It's the stuff of gripping Cold War espionage thrillers, except that this is real life.

| Dec 30, 2020

If there's any documentary that could bring the beatings and horror alive, it was Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge.

| Dec 30, 2020

With harrowing, often nauseating testimony and the incredibly clever, digital alteration of faces, it shows how a "lucky" few have been smuggled out and given shelter by the Russian LGBT Network, with the aim of flying them to safety in Canada.

| Dec 30, 2020

France's documentary is suffocating, as testimonies are interspersed with confiscated videos of police brutality and mob violence... What makes France's film compelling, however, is its immediacy.

| Dec 30, 2020

Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge. brought home the horror with a dramatic urgency. David France's grimly compelling film was a docu-thriller, with heart-stopping moments as activists spirited people out of the country in clandestine operations.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2020

Welcome to Chechnya is a blisteringly painful watch, one that imparts new meaning on the practice of bearing witness. This is the kind of film destined to be on "essential" documentary lists for decades to come.

| Dec 30, 2020

France sensitively draws out the personalities of his subjects, ensuring that, despite the digital disguises and pseudonyms, they emerge as distinct individuals.

| Dec 30, 2020

David France has made a difficult, distressing and often tremendously bleak film about the torture and murder of LGBT people in Chechnya, and the brave efforts of community activists and organisers to "extract" them from the region.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2020

[David France's] most recent, possibly the best and undoubtedly the most shocking feature film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 9, 2020

David France's documentary is like an emergency heart surgery. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 9, 2020