PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The day Mstyslav Chernov won the BAFTA for his documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” was the day he learned two soldiers he knew had been killed in combat. They were primary subjects of his new film “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a harrowing portrait of modern warfare that puts audiences on the frontlines of the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“The film changed along the way,” Chernov, a videojournalist with The Associated Press, said last week after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. “From a story of the success of that operation it became a story of loss, of memory, of the price that soldiers pay for every single inch of the land. And that’s where the name came from.”
Coming back to Park City, Utah, with a new film has been a sobering, full circle moment for Chernov. It’s the place where he first showcased “20 Days in Mariupol” two years ago. Although he received the highest honors a journalist and a filmmaker can get for his work, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar included, it’s for reportage on a war in his home country that won’t end and that he can’t stop covering.
The AP spoke to Chernov about “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a co-production between the AP and PBS Frontline, the cognitive dissonance of whiplashing between a movie release and the frontlines as well as his responsibility to Ukraine. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Two years ago at Sundance, you were eager to go back to Ukraine. Was this already on your mind that you wanted to show the soldiers?
CHERNOV: I gave a lot of thought after I left Mariupol. Do I want to continue doing what I was doing? We felt a lot of trauma and a lot of loss, guilt even, that we didn’t do enough. But then again, that tragedy you go through, the tragedy of people who you’re filming, it doesn’t let you to just stop doing what you do. You always want to do more and you actually can’t stop.
At every point in this journey I was also editing “20 Days in Mariupol” and then it went on to screen all over the world. The response was great, but more I felt that response and more I saw that things are not changing, more I wanted to go back and to continue shooting, and that’s what I did.
At some point in summer of 2023, when Ukraine had a highly anticipated and very important counteroffensive, we also had our theatrical release for “20 Days in Mariupol.” So from LA, where at Laemmle Cinema, you would see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” and “20 Days in Mariupol” posters and (after) speaking to the public, I would fly back to Poland, drive to the frontline and start shooting this film.
The story of Andriivka captured me so much that I would go back and keep following the platoon. And the tragedy was that as more time passed more people who we initially filmed on the journey to Andriivka have died.
AP: With ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ you found yourself in situations and knew to keep shooting. Here, you went in knowing you wanted to make a film. How did that change what you were doing?
CHERNOV: Making “20 Days in Mariupol” and seeing the impact it ultimately had, seeing how big the audience was, made me think that the impact of journalism could be complemented with an impact of documentary filmmaking and that combination, if you can find the right balance between those two approaches, could be very powerful.
The form of the cinema is much more long lasting than the news. As important as journalism is, unfortunately, there’s just so much of things happening in the world, so many important stories, that it takes extraordinary efforts to keep someone’s attention on the story, especially if that story is important to you personally. And the story of Andriivka and the soldiers who are trying to get there is personally very important to me.
AP: This film puts audiences on the frontline in ways that we’re only used to seeing in fictional war films. How were able to do that?
CHERNOV: Technology is changing. The audience is changing. So the medium of documentary that talks about important current events has to change as well. To be able to catch up, we constantly need to search for new forms, for new ways of telling the story, for new visual solutions to that. The making of “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” the approach is experimental. We are trying to show modern warfare the way no one has done it before or since. Of course there are elements that are classic for the documentary, but I also wanted the story to be so immersive, so on the ground, so experiential for the audience, that they forget that they are watching a narrative fiction film or a documentary. Then when they reach the end of the film, when they realize that everything they just saw was real, it would hit them even harder.
AP: You gave one of the all-time great Oscar speeches. Was Andriivka heavy on your mind when you took that stage?
CHERNOV: I was thinking about all the boys, yes, when I was on stage. There’d been so many things happening in the background when we were sitting in that beautiful place with all the movie stars and seeing the speeches that they were giving.
I had got hundreds of messages of people who were telling me what to say on the stage, all important. I had a feeling that 40 million Ukrainians, if I will be lucky to go on that stage, will be watching me and every single word that will be said. There is a responsibility, a responsibility to journalism and a responsibility to me being Ukrainian, the responsibility to the people of Mariupol and responsibility to these soldiers that I was, by that time, filming for almost a year.
AP: What has all of this meant to friends at home, to the people of Ukraine?
CHERNOV: After the premiere, we received a lot of messages or just comments on social media that it is so timely to have a film like that when there are almost no reports, either journalistic or documentary from the frontline from the perspective of a soldier. Partially because the interest has shifted elsewhere. Partially because it has become impossible to work at the frontline because of the drones, because of the how precise and deadly weapons are and because journalists have become targets.
I think people are just grateful for that. They say, thank you for showing that perspective and thank you for reminding the world about Ukraine, that it is not just a political chip in a bargaining, that it is actually real people. And that’s what we have to keep in mind, that these are real people. These are not numbers and not distances.
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For more coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/sundance-film-festival
