In July 2020, Vladimir Putin changed the Russian constitution to ban same-sex marriage with an amendment that explicitly defines marriage as between a man and woman. 77% of the country’s population supported the change.

At the same time, Gay Propaganda law passed in 2013 actively functions in Russia. It notoriously criminalises representations of LGBTQIA+ community and their relationships, supposedly to protect children from being exposed to homosexuality. It has also encouraged a wave of hate crimes including beatings, rape and torture that continue to this day.

One year on from the constitutional change, the film ‘We Will Become Better’ was released in order to challenge these offensive, narrow portrayals of same-sex relationship with a simple message: ‘Love is everyone’s right’.

By making and releasing ‘We Will Become Better’ we took the risk of essentially breaking the Gay Propaganda law.

Initially at the conceptualization stage it was clear that the film would be controversial for the majority of a Russian audience. Starting the film with two men in love would scare a vast homophobic part of the audience. So we decided to immerse the viewer into the film so deep that they would see beyond sex and cliches. We wanted to show two human beings that are in love.

The idea was to tell a story about love as a universally understandable feeling.

One year on from the constitutional change, the film ‘We Will Become Better’ was released in order to challenge these offensive, narrow portrayals of same-sex relationship with a simple message: ‘Love is everyone’s right’.

We remixed the original song by Sansara and added a second male voice (initially there was one). Then we shot the music video to this song and uploaded it on the band’s official Youtube channel and social media. It was also broadcast on Rain, a Russian TV-channel.

Over 3 mln views on social media, with 90% of positive comments

Media reach: over 200 publications. We got support from many Russian media outlets, who were eager to publish a story about ‘We Will Become Better’ despite the Gay Propaganda law.

Many international LGBT+ communities supported the short film and the cause behind it.