Children 404 (Russian) (Documentary)

For any documentary to be successful, it is very important for it to hold viewers attention. Tell a story that has something important to say, incorporate key characters and their interactions and present in a way that viewers wanna know whats going to happen next. Sadly, this documentary miserable fails in the latter. It does have an important story to tell. But it is so long and drawn and boring that within 30 minutes into it and you have already completely lost the interest.

Based on the stories from the Children-404 social networking project, which offered Russian (and international) youth a channel to express themselves and seek or offer support, this documentary’s name wants to say that ‘visibility is vital’. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin passed a bill forbidding the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” LGBT youth, now defenseless against insults and intimidation under this “gay propaganda” law, are considered sick, sinful and abnormal. The teens here detail their humiliations and discriminations, as well as their courageous stands against bullies. Although the documentary focuses only on 2 individuals mainly. A guy who wants to move to Canada and the girl who started the whole campaign. Not really sure what happened to all these other stories.

The documentary is brave and is an important story to tell that the world needs to hear but as I mentioned above, it fails to grab the attention. The one scene that was interesting for me was when the guy is standing with a banner in a square and the hateful comments he hears form the passers by and when the cops approach him. But otherwise there was a lot of drag. I guess lack of funds was probably one of the reasons to make it in a very home-made video style. In any case it is a very real and terrifying picture of contemporary Russia. (4/10)

Comments

luigi43 said…

Last two lines of Your professional comment are, IMO,
the soul ,the bones and flesh of this very amateurish motion picture. The GLBT "community"need to know and remember.

December 9, 2014 at 8:09 AM

Golu said…

yeah. you are absolutely right

December 9, 2014 at 9:54 AM

Unknown said…

Hello,

I would like to suggest a few films to review, can you please email me at
tascia(at)syndicado.com
Just replace the (at) with @, not sure if I can post links in the comments section.

Thanks,
Tascia

December 22, 2014 at 1:07 PM

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