Fresh off his Oscar win for 20 Days in Mariupol, filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov returns to the front lines of the war in Ukraine with 2000 Meters to Andriivka. Readers can get their first look at the harrowing documentary with the new trailer released ahead of the film’s theatrical run. 2000 Meters to Andriivka offers a worthy follow-up to Mariupol as Chernov provides an immersive portrait of combat. The doc goes to the front with a platoon of Ukrainian soldiers as they make a short but harrowing trek to reclaim land occupied by Russian invaders. It’s an intense cinematic experience.
The film, which won Chernov the directing prize at Sundance earlier this year and had its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs, provides an immediate glimpse from the front thanks to body cameras affixed to Ukrainian soldiers. These vantage points let viewers feel every blow and near miss as the soldiers navigate the bullets and bombs that make the relatively short distance an arduous journey for a piece of land whose significance is mostly symbolic for the fight ahead. But the soldiers’ viewpoints of the war also inject 2000 Meters to Andriivka with a chilling sense of loss as Chernov occasionally appears in voiceover to commemorate the men who have fallen amid the warfare.
“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,” wrote Jason Gorber in POV’s review of the film from Sundance. “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.”
Watch the trailer for 2000 Meters to Andriivka below and read more about the film in issue #123.
