Gay asylum: mother tongue machinations
Daniel Nelson
Silent Voice is a claustrophobic, intense documentary about a few tormented weeks in the life of a Chechen refugee whose face cannot be shown and whose voice cannot be heard.
Anonymity was vital because he had fled to Belgium, where some other Chechen migrants were considered informers or even a threat to his life.
For the same reason, the places of refuge in and out of which he was bundled every few days could not be identified.
His voice could not be heard because he was unable to speak (psychogenic aphonia) as a result of torture after his fellow martial arts fighter brothers discovered his homosexuality.
Piling woe upon woe, without a voice he couldn’t press his case for refugee status. The affliction caused by the attack that forced him to flee was itself a barrier to his safety.
Worse – yes, there is worse – he could not speak to his mother. The courageous Belgian group that rescued him told him and others facing similar life-threatening danger that they must not, under any circumstances, return the calls of their anguished families. The fear is that the calls may be traced, or even that family members, willingly or under coercion, are trying to lure them back to be murdered for dishonouring their family or their nation.
It’s hard to know which is more harrowing for Khavag and for viewers: the knuckle-gripping muscle-straining effort to produce a scintilla of sound, any sound, from his traumatised body, or the heartbreaking, pleading, wheedling messages from his mother, veering wildly between accusations of his impurity, declarations of love, and pleas of poverty, vulnerability and abandonment.
It’s a small, intimate film, a reconstruction of events filmed quickly by a crew of three after two-years’ patient confidence-building preparation. Lingering close-ups of Khavag’s musculature and throat stand in for the details of his story. Much is left to the viewer’s imagination. But in this instance is less is more. The result is not the usual who-said-what-to-whom documentary investigation, but an impressionistic experience of the impact of crazed intolerance on an individual.
It’s like an electric jolt to your heart. Claustrophobic, brilliant, tragic, moving.
[Since the film was completed, Khavag’s voice has partially returned, with the help of therapy, and he has won his asylum claim. Screenings at film festivals in Moscow and St Petersburg were cancelled earlier this year at the last moment.]
* Silent Voice is available on Barbican Cinema on Demand until 30 September. Info: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/series/cinema-on-demand