When the Oscar for best picture can go to a low-budget film with a gay protagonist and an entirely black cast, there is perhaps a temptation to assume that the struggle to tell diverse or unfamiliar stories must be over at last. The new documentary Mr Gay Syria should serve as a corrective to any such complacency.

Its title has about it the whiff of a tasteless joke. So successfully has Islamic State disseminated its doctrine of hatred that the mere idea of gay Syrians calls to mind gay men and boys being thrown to their death from rooftops. But that was one of the reasons why Mahmoud Hassino, who works with LGBT refugees in Berlin, set up a contest last year to find a Syrian entrant to compete in Mr Gay World 2016. That process is now the subject of Ayşe Toprak’s insightful and sensitive film. “Mahmoud was so fed up of everyone associating gay Syrians with those killings,” she tells me on the phone from her home in Istanbul. “He wanted to say: ‘Look, we live. We fight.’ He wanted the world to know about the living gay Syrians, not just the dead ones.”

Toprak’s film presents the lives of a handful of the contestants, all of them refugees living in Istanbul, as they prepare for the big event. The main focus is on Hussein, a hairdresser who is closeted from his family and has the added complication of an infant daughter. There is also Omar, an infectiously jolly cook, and Wissam, who plans to win over the judges with a combination of Minnie Mouse ears, heels and hot pants. Such tomfoolery serves a vital function. Though the picture begins with a Gay Pride parade being violently disrupted by police, the instances of oppression and homophobia are outnumbered by scenes depicting matter-of-factly the lives of these resilient men who have, as Hussein puts it, arrived at courage by way of despair. “The contest itself was really celebratory,” says Toprak. “It’s part of their struggle that they want to laugh and have fun in order to stay alive. Everyone in that room felt proud of who they were.”

Even for these Syrians who have made it to Turkey, life continues to be arduous: as immigrants they have no rights and cannot legally work, Toprak explains, so they often end up putting themselves at risk in the sex industry. But she made a choice early on to tell a more hopeful story. “The misery of the Syrian crisis somehow ends up overwhelming what is underneath. People get tired of it and stop listening or watching. Mahmoud said to me: ‘If I’m always crying, it’s like I don’t exist.’ He needs to have fun with life to feel he’s still living it. Look at his Mr Gay Syria idea. Who would hold a beauty contest in the middle of this crisis? It’s crazy! But it’s actually a way of surviving.” She also decided not to feature Hussein’s claim, which he has made in a number of newspaper interviews, that one of his former boyfriends was murdered by Isis. Was he lying? “I don’t know. He made that claim to us but I didn’t want to include it because there is no way of verifying it. Sometimes people will very naively use the media to make their situation more tragic than it is. But even if it’s a lie, the fact that someone has to make up stuff like that shows how desperate they are.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A scene from Mr Gay Syria. Photograph: Les Films D'Antoine/Coin Film/Toprak Film

There is no shortage of hardship in the film already. One of the contestants receives a death threat from his own father, while the eventual winner of the Syrian heat has to endure a protracted visa application process to discover whether or not he can travel to the final in Malta.

At least the production itself went relatively smoothly. Shooting a film about gay Syrian refugees in Istanbul is surprisingly easy, it turns out, as long as you don’t tell anyone you’re shooting a film about gay Syrian refugees in Istanbul. “This project became so many other different films along the way,” Toprak laughs. “Whenever we were stopped by police or officials, we would say we were making a film about the cultural institutions of Istanbul called The Joys of Life. We were very well-rehearsed.”

One institution that emerges from the film without much distinction is Mr Gay World. Though its website is full of high-minded sentiments (the aim of the annual contest, it states, is to remind us that “in many regions on our planet being gay is a challenge and a fight for basic human rights”), those who run Mr Gay World appear not to have noticed that the Syrian case represented an opportunity to put those words into action. The organisers responded to my email inquiries about their failure to help the Syrian contestants by insisting that “no further comments will be made” but the proof is in the picture. Even when it seems that the man crowned Mr Gay Syria will be prevented from reaching Malta, no offer is made for him to participate via Skype, and no one associated with Mr Gay World realises that bestowing the title on him in absentia would send a positive message of solidarity.

“That was a big disappointment for all of us,” Toprak agrees. “The organisation says it’s not just a beauty contest, that it’s all about human rights, but when you get there, you find there’s no media presence. I think they were actually scared of having a Mr Gay Syria in there. For the honour and the symbolism, they could have given him the prize. Instead, they said: ‘No, he has to be here in person.’”

The contest itself proved to be an inconsequential affair (“It’s boring – that’s why you only see 40 seconds or so on screen”) and merely the jumping-off point for the rest of the movie. “We always had back-up plans. Our plan B was to rent a boat and take the winner there ourselves. We did look into it. We checked out which yachts tend not to get stopped. Then we came to our senses. ‘Oh my God, no, that’s smuggling people in. That has consequences!’ Even Mr Gay Syria was, like, ‘You’re being ridiculous.’”

As the film gets ready to hit the festival circuit, Toprak is aware of the possible consequences of exposure. “We don’t want to show it in Turkey because Hussein is still there,” she tells me. “He says sometimes that he is scared but he has also told me he stands by the film 100%. It is not necessarily any harder now for LGBT people in Turkey – it is simply harder now for women, Kurds, everyone. It’s a claustrophobic society.” The irony of releasing the film as the US government fights to keep its travel ban in place, including an indefinite clampdown on Syrian refugees, is not lost on the film-maker. “When that was announced, it felt like the whole world was collapsing.”

She sees a glimmer of hope, though, in this week’s Oscar results. “Moonlight is an amazing, significant film and I’m sure it will have an impact on other films. You see that all the time in the documentary world – films have managed to change policy, change lives.” Does her own film have that potential? “A friend of mine who watched it said: ‘It made me wish something good would happen to these guys.’ That’s an important feeling. If everyone who sees it feels that way, it may not change policy, but perhaps it will make us feel closer to people we fear.”

• To contribute to Mr Gay Syria’ crowdfunding campaign visit kisskissbankbank