Key Points – From Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-winning director of “20 Days in Mariupol,” comes a new feature documentary, “2000 Meters to Andriivka.”
-Using his own and soldiers’ GoPro footage, the film provides a visceral, ground-level account of a Ukrainian unit’s brutal 1.2-mile battle to liberate a small village in the fall of 2023.
-The film is a heartbreaking look at the true cost of war, revealing that the village was eventually lost again to the Russians and that many of the soldiers featured, including the main subject’s friends, were later killed.
Documentary ‘2000 Meters to Andriivka’ Follows a Key Battle in the Ukraine war
In 2023, Mstyslav Chernov directed the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” which depicted the time the filmmaker spent with his colleagues during the siege of Mariupol, in the opening weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The film was almost universally acclaimed and ultimately won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Now, Chernov and his team, including AP reporter Alex Babenko, have returned with another feature documentary, also set on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. The film is titled “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” and it follows a group of Ukrainian soldiers as they battle through 2,000 meters—approximately 1.2 miles—of forest land to liberate the titular village in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine, in the fall of 2023.
The film depicts Ukrainian soldiers seeking to recapture the village, which was occupied by the Russians earlier in the invasion, and which has been almost destroyed in the process. It has, however, since fallen back into Russian control. And that’s not all the tragedy that’s included in the film, as on several occasions, we see footage of soldiers who we’re told later went on to meet brutal ends.
The film consists of footage shot by the filmmakers, as well as footage captured by the soldiers’ GoPro cameras. It begins with an immersive battle that recalls the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan, and continues on the slow journey towards Andriivka.
Chernov, the director, is from the town of Kharkiv, just two hours away from the events seen in the new documentary.
Between Two Worlds
Chernov says in his director’s statement that he “had been straddling two worlds” in the time leading up to working on the film – he traveled to film festivals in the U.S. and Europe to promote 20 Days in Mariupol, while occasionally returning to the war zone in Ukraine.
“It felt like moving between two epochs,” the director said in his statement. “One world was comfortable and set in the present. The other looked like something out of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Hemingway’s dispatches from the Spanish Civil War, or a Paul Nash war painting: cities destroyed by airstrikes, cut-down forests, the roar of artillery, gas, and bullets. It seemed even worse now, with the realities of modern warfare. Drones dominated the skies, and there was no hiding from them.”
It was essential for the filmmaker to transcend the headlines, which are the primary way most people outside the country perceive the war.
“Outside Ukraine, the counteroffensive was reported in numbers: casualties, kilometers gained or lost, and days since the beginning of the invasion. On the ground, it was more. Every inch of land was covered in blood, broken bodies, and grieving families. And I wanted to show what those numbers really meant.”
He added that he was introduced to Fedya, whose unit he ultimately followed in the film, along with three of his fellow soldiers; Fedya, he said, is now the last one standing among that group.
When to See It
The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens on Friday at Film Forum in New York and on August 1 at Laemmle Monica Film Center in Los Angeles. Like 20 Days in Mariupol before it, the film is a co-production of PBS’s Frontline series and is scheduled to air on PBS channels later this year, likely ahead of awards contention.
And it’s not the only nonfiction film about the war that’s coming soon. A controversial documentary called “Russians at War, ” featuring a film crew embedded with a Russian unit, was pulled from last year’s Toronto International Film Festival but will launch directly from the film’s website on August 12. And Checkpoint Zoo, a documentary about the rescue of animals from a zoo, behind enemy lines, during the Russian invasion, will be released in theaters on August 15.
About the Author:
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
