A still from 2000 Meters to Andriivka by Mstyslav Chernov, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. | Photo by Mstyslav Chernov. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

2000 Meters to Andriivka Review: A Harrowing New Chapter from the Ukrainian War

Sundance 2025

/
9 mins read

2000 Meters to Andriivka
(Ukraine, 107 min.)
Dir. Mstyslav Chernov
Programme: World Cinema Documentary Competition (World Premiere)

 

In 2023, Mstyslav Chernov crafted an absolutely brilliant film about the travails of covering a conflict that he found himself directly in the midst of with 20 Days in Mariupol. The Associated Press (AP) journalist had spent years covering war, including in his own country, but when the bombs began falling in his home town, he documented not only the events he was tasked with capturing, but those between-the-cuts moments that show the labours of being a war journalist. His film went on to deservedly win the Oscar, and 20 Days in Mariopol immediately felt destined to become a classic.

Chernov’s follow-up film is no less riveting, but the magnitude proves even more challenging to stomach. As per the film’s title, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, we witness the Sysephean task of Ukrainian soldiers marching inch by inch towards a bombed-out place marked on a map in the Eastern part of Ukraine, a village-like settlement that had been overrun by the Russian invasion. While the distance on paper isn’t far, we are shown time and again the deadly passage as a deathtrap. Mine fields lay on the left and the right, blown-up trees litter a small path forward, where hidden trenches and tunnels hide enemy combatants, and bodies of friend and foe litter the path forward.

Chernov’s own journey is to follow a small group of  soldiers as they embark on a mission that seems completely insane for those on the outside. Lives are risked and even sacrificed just to make the 2 km trek towards a bombed-out shell of a village long abandoned, all in order to raise the colours of the Ukrainian flag in defiance of the attackers in close proximity. While hiding in dug-out areas along the way waiting for some calm before heading forward, we hear the stories of these men-turned-soldiers, and hear why they feel the need to make these kind of small, seemingly trivial victories stand for a nation under attack.

What makes these moments all that much more harrowing is when Chernov’s voiceover tells us that an individual we meet on screen was to die in another mission, all of them seemingly taking place five months from the events captured for this film back in 2023. While the filmmaker’s growing sense of ennui is palpable, it feels much more brutal when his slight cynicism is proven correct. Whatever sense of optimism shown by the soldiers is shown as nothing short of futile.

Yet this isn’t simply a dour telling about the meaningless of these actions, and Chernov’s ambivalence is brilliantly exposed to match our own reactions from afar. From the tiniest moments of humanity, to the purring of a cat placed into a knapsack for retreat back behind the lines, we see the brutal reality of combat exposed, as well as the quotidian conversations that have taken place on battlefields throughout history that were never captured with this level of intimacy.

What’s interesting for a film by a famed photojournalist is how much of the footage is captured not by professionals with cameras from afar, but from the GoPros and other action cameras strapped on the soldiers themselves. These sequences that are among the most difficult to watch, notwithstanding those like myself subject to motion sickness from the “shakicam” aesthetic. The first moments in particular are a harrowing nightmare, akin to fictional representations like Saving Private Ryan but with far more insular scope. It’s a remarkable piece of journalism captured by eyewitnesses, and throughout,   Chernov and his collaborators elevate these seemingly disparate and chaotic moments into brilliantly realized  cinema through their astute framing of events.

It would be easy to revel in the horrifying beauty of the warfare that’s long captivated creatives, just as it would be simple to succumb to the sense of futility evoked by what we witness. I was reminded of tales of Passchendaele, that notorious Great War battle for a hill that took hundreds of thousands of lives only to have everything revert a short period later. Yet out of that narrative came a story of Canadian resilience, and the small events assumed a grander status for generations that followed. While the history of Andriivka’s future is yet to be written, it’s easy to see why on this front, one filmmaker focused on the need to hold onto land that once was part of Ukraine rather that to simply give up and walk away to the invading foes. The film makes  seemingly trivial events like hanging a flag worth the cost for the benefit they represent.

While the nuts-and-bolts strategic decisions seem particularly difficult to comprehend, these other elements are often even more intangible than combat and reflect upon this march through the death zone on the road to Andriivka. As the footage from the cameras strapped onto the soldiers shows, it’s a world of chaos and confusion. Back at the base, we see commanders staring at screens, the images of their comrades a particular macabre form of television. The first person point-of-view shots are easily mistaken for a video game, the kind of first-person action that millions choose as their entertainment. But in this grisly form of reality, they lack the flair of perfectly rendered images on one’s PC or console.

2000 Meters to Andriivka is extraordinary, both in its scope and in its impact. It’s also an extraordinarily difficult film to watch, and despite the support of both AP and PBS’s Frontline, many viewers will likely choose to turn away rather than to engage. That would be a shame, for despite the unrelenting horrors shown throughout, this is a vital story demanding to be heard. Chernov once again uses his extraordinarily well-honed story-telling chops to wrench from the chaos a moment in this war to represent a true boots-on-the-ground insight that elucidates not simply the reality of this conflict, but no doubt conflicts throughout the ages.

Shattering, sublime, 2000 Meters to Andriivka may be a difficult road to traverse, but it’s a film deserving of attention. It refuses to fall prey to easy jingoism, just as it denies the descent into sullenness or jadedness. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted look into the maw of mayhem, providing a profound perspective of these men on a mission to march through this deadly passage in order to provide, if only for a brief moment, a symbol of resilience in the face of annihilation. Chernov returns with another truly remarkable film, and I can only hope that peace soon reigns so that he can turn his keen eye to matters of joy rather than sorrow and catastrophe—and know some well-earned peace.

2000 Meters to Andriivka premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Jason Gorber is a film journalist and member of the Toronto Film Critics Association. He is the Managing Editor/Chief Critic at ThatShelf.com and a regular contributor for POV Magazine, RogerEbert.com and CBC Radio. His has written for Slashfilm, Esquire, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Screen Anarchy, HighDefDigest, Birth.Movies.Death, IndieWire and more. He has appeared on CTV NewsChannel, CP24, and many other broadcasters. He has been a jury member at the Reykjavik International Film Festival, Calgary Underground Film Festival, RiverRun Film Festival, TIFF Canada's Top 10, Reel Asian and Fantasia's New Flesh Award. Jason has been a Tomatometer-approved critic for over 20 years.

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