Latest in David France

In 2017, Russia's Chechen Republic declared open season on LGBTQ people, launching what Human Rights Watch has called a "vicious large-scale anti-gay purge." David France, director of the HBO documentary Welcome to Chechnya, says there's another word for it. "It’s an absolute genocide," France said during an…

For LGBTQ people in Chechnya, life has become a nightmare. The Russian republic has never been very hospitable to gays, but in 2017 the Chechen government launched an outright purge against perceived members of the LGBTQ community. "People in Chechnya who are suspected of being lesbian, gay or bisexual, are facing a…

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 men being abducted, tortured, beaten and even killed at the hands of authorities started coming to the forefront…

“When people think of plagues, they think of me,” jokes David France. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, the director of 2012’s Oscar-nominated documentary How To Survive A Plague has seen an uptick in media requests, the title of his most known work all but an engraved invitation. The film chronicles the…

In David France’s documentary Welcome to Chechnya, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker puts an urgent and, at times, a difficult-to-watch lens on the repressive and violent treatment of the LGBTQ community in the Russian republic. Since 2016, Chechnya's tyrannical leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has looked to "cleanse the blood" of…

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Documentary Films has acquired North American television and streaming rights to Welcome to Chechnya, the documentary by David France, the Oscar-nominated director of How to Survive a Plague and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. The deal was struck in advance of the film making its world premiere…

The new trailer for the Netflix documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson from Academy Award-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague) puts the spotlight on the titular Johnson, who has been dubbed as the Rosa Parks of the LGBT movement. In 1992, Johnson was found dead and floating in the…

National Geographic is developing How To Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS as a scripted miniseries, with Scott Rudin as executive producer. The project was announced today during Nat Geo’s presentation at TCA. Based on David France’s praised nonfiction book about the 1980s AIDS…