An LGBT pride parade in St Petersburg, 2014. Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0: Maria Komarova / Flickr. Some rights reserved.In 2014, Russian directors Pavel Loparev and Askold Kurov made Children-404, a film about young LGBT people in Russia and the harassment they face. In 2017, Pavel Loparev set up an educational project called Illuminator. This initiative, aimed at parents, uses video lectures by experts and short documentary films to explain the nature of their child’s sexual orientation and suggests how they should react to their coming-out.
I spoke to Loparev about the beginnings of Illuminator and where it’s going now, why he moved his husband from New York to Siberia and why coming out in Russia is necessary, but risky.
How did the idea for the project come to you?
