Russian LGBT Network and Voskhod launched 'We Will Become Better' in June 2021, the first Russian LGBTQIA+ film in years to portray a gay relationship openly.
How Russian LGBT Network Made a Film Russia Was Not Ready to See
Russian LGBT Network released 'We Will Become Better' in June 2021, a six-minute film produced by Voskhod that portrays a gay relationship openly — making it the first Russian LGBTQIA+ public service campaign in years to show same-sex love on screen and the country's first explicitly anti-homophobic advertising project aimed at reducing hatred toward the LGBTQIA+ community, according to Awards Ciclopefestival.
The campaign arrived at a moment of acute political tension in Russia. In July 2020, President Vladimir Putin amended the Russian constitution to define marriage explicitly as a union between a man and a woman, banning same-sex marriage at the highest legislative level. According to reporting by The Moscow Times, the amendment drew support from a substantial majority of the Russian population. Set against this backdrop, 'We Will Become Better' was conceived as a direct creative challenge to the officially sanctioned hostility — not a protest document, but a film with a single, declarative message: love is everyone's right, according to The One Club.
The campaign's objective was to humanise gay relationships in a media environment where such portrayals had been effectively criminalised. Russia's Gay Propaganda Law, passed in 2013, bans representations of LGBTQIA+ identity and relationships in contexts where minors might be exposed to them, and as documented by the United Nations Special Procedures communications reports, the law has enabled a documented pattern of violence against the community including beatings and other serious abuses, according to Awards Artdirectorsclub Ru. The Russian LGBT Network, as the client, chose to respond not with legal argument but with emotional storytelling. One year after the constitutional amendment, they commissioned Voskhod — the Yekaterinburg-based agency — to make a film that simply showed two men in love, as an act of visibility and solidarity in the Russian public sphere. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 82/100 reflects both its cultural ambition and the structural craft that supports it.
Russian LGBT Network built the campaign's strategy on a deliberately simple insight. In a country where the law frames gay relationships as a threat to children, the most subversive act available to a public service communicator is to show those relationships as ordinary, tender, and human. The strategic proposition behind 'We Will Become Better' rests not on argument but on emotional evidence — the film does not debate the Gay Propaganda Law of 2013 but renders it beside the point by presenting what it seeks to erase.
The strategic context in Russia in 2021 was severe by any international comparison. The constitutional amendment of 2020, as reported by The Moscow Times, institutionalised discrimination at the foundational level of the Russian state. Meanwhile, organisations such as Coming Out St. Petersburg had documented the chilling effect of the 2013 law on civil society, noting the near-total disappearance of publicly visible LGBTQIA+ representation in Russian media. The Russian LGBT Network itself was subsequently designated an unregistered public association performing the functions of a foreign agent by Russian authorities in November 2021, as recorded by the Danish Institute for Human Rights. This designation underlines the genuine risk the campaign entailed.
Competitive context matters here. While international campaigns from organisations such as GLAAD in the United States or Stonewall in the United Kingdom have been able to operate within permissive or at least neutral legal frameworks, Russian LGBT Network had no such latitude. The campaign was not competing for attention in an open marketplace of ideas — it was operating inside a legally hostile environment where visibility itself constituted defiance. That structural condition shaped every creative and distribution decision Voskhod made, and distinguishes 'We Will Become Better' from comparable public service work produced elsewhere in the world.
Director Andzej Gavriss shaped 'We Will Become Better' as a portrait film rather than a conventional public service announcement. The six-minute work uses interpretive dance, split-screen imagery, and sustained intimate storytelling to construct an emotional argument that operates entirely without dialogue polemic. Actors Nikita Orlov and Maxim Avdeev play the couple at the film's centre, and the specificity of their performances grounds what could have been an abstract statement in observable, credible human experience.
Evgeny Primachenko served as writer and Creative Director at Voskhod, shaping the film's conceptual architecture alongside Gavriss. Andrey Nikolaev served as Director of Photography, and the visual language he developed — intimate framings, careful use of domestic light, unhurried editing rhythm — reinforces the campaign's core argument that the relationship being portrayed is unremarkable in the best sense: private, loving, and real. Julija Fricsone-Gavriss served as Production Designer, and Alexandra Galius as Line Producer, with executive production handled by Egor Solomatin, Mikhail Marizov, and Evgeny Primachenko. Production companies Daddy's Film and Spot, alongside HALAL Amsterdam, brought the film to completion.
The music was composed and performed by Sansara, the Russian band whose track gives the campaign its full title — 'Sansara: We Will Become Better' — with Felix Bondarev contributing as a music collaborator, as documented by Voskhod Agency. The choice of a Russian-language song by a Russian artist was not incidental. It anchors the film inside Russian cultural experience rather than presenting LGBTQIA+ identity as something imported or foreign — a direct rebuttal to one of the most common rhetorical weapons deployed against gay rights in Russia. The Red Apple International Advertising Festival recognised the campaign's directorial achievement with a Gold award for Best Direction in TV and Cinema Advertising Craft, as recorded by Festival Ru, validating the craft dimension of Gavriss's work by the standards of the Russian advertising industry itself.
The campaign achieved a documented reach inside a hostile distribution environment. Per archived metadata cited by clapboard.com, 'We Will Become Better' accumulated 1,124,398 YouTube views, 5,362 likes, and 603 comments — figures that represent meaningful exposure for a film operating without broadcast access or conventional paid media support in Russia, where the Gay Propaganda Law severely limits distribution channels for LGBTQIA+ content.
The Red Apple International Advertising Festival — Russia's most prominent advertising awards programme, as recognised by festival.ru — awarded the campaign four distinctions in 2021. These comprised a Gold for Branded Content for Non-profit Organisations, a Gold for Best Direction in TV and Cinema Advertising Craft, a Gold for Non-profit Film in the TV and Cinema Advertising Sectors category, and a further recognition documented by clapboard.com. The concentration of Gold awards at a domestic Russian festival carries particular weight: it signals that the campaign was judged to be outstanding not only by international humanitarian standards but by the professional community operating inside Russia's own advertising industry.
No independently audited third-party performance data beyond the archived YouTube metrics is publicly available for this campaign, which is consistent with the operational constraints facing the Russian LGBT Network and Voskhod at the time of release. What the structural evidence does confirm is that the film succeeded on the terms its creators set for it: it existed, it was seen by over a million viewers, it won the recognition of its domestic industry, and it placed a portrayal of a gay relationship into the Russian public record at a moment when doing so carried legal and personal risk for everyone involved.
'We Will Become Better' is a six-minute film released in June 2021 by Russian LGBT Network, created by Yekaterinburg agency Voskhod. It portrays a gay relationship openly, carrying the message that love is everyone's right, and stands as Russia's first explicitly anti-homophobic public service film campaign in years.
The film was released one year after Russia's 2020 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Russian LGBT Network and Voskhod chose the anniversary to challenge the officially sanctioned hostility toward LGBTQIA+ people in Russia through emotional storytelling rather than legal argument, making visibility itself an act of public service.
Andzej Gavriss directed the film. Evgeny Primachenko served as writer and Creative Director at Voskhod. Andrey Nikolaev was Director of Photography. The production involved companies Daddy's Film, Spot, and HALAL Amsterdam, with music performed by Russian band Sansara featuring Felix Bondarev.
The campaign won multiple Gold awards at the Red Apple International Advertising Festival 2021, as recorded by festival.ru. These included Golds for Branded Content for Non-profit Organisations, Best Direction in TV and Cinema Advertising Craft, and Non-profit Film — recognising both creative and strategic achievement within Russia's own advertising industry.
Per archived metadata cited by clapboard.com, the film accumulated 1,124,398 YouTube views alongside 5,362 likes and 603 comments. These figures represent substantial organic reach for a campaign operating without broadcast access under Russia's Gay Propaganda Law, which severely restricts LGBTQIA+ content distribution.
Russia's Gay Propaganda Law of 2013 criminalises public representations of LGBTQIA+ relationships. Russian LGBT Network was designated a foreign agent by Russian authorities in November 2021, as recorded by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, illustrating the genuine legal exposure faced by everyone involved in producing and distributing this campaign.
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