Even after getting the world’s attention with the Oscar-winning “20 Days in Mariupol,” Mstyslav Chernov knew that to continue to chronicle the harsh reality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he knew he had to confront another.
“The power of [any] movie is very limited,” Chernov says. “I don’t think there was ever a film, a documentary, or a book or a photo that stopped war. It takes a lot of people, a lot of political will, and a lot of resilience, and I do hope that a film at least helps politicians around the world and audiences around the world to understand how Ukrainians see it. That for Ukrainians, [this] is not an abstract political conversation, but it is just a simple matter of surviving and fighting for their families, and for their children not to have to fight this war in the future.”
Chernov had already seen more horrors than anyone ever should, having to adjust to being called a filmmaker when he began to film “20 Days in Mariupol” only because he was on the ground as one of the last journalists left in the city that was one of the first to be attacked in the spring of 2022. But after offering a rare view of the destruction that Russian President Vladimir Putin has wrought in an unconscionable power grab when it’s too dangerous for international press corps to cover the war, Chernov headed to the frontlines in his staggering follow-up that’s bound to shake anyone who has been worn down by the conflict as it has dragged through on for the past three years.
In “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” the director follows the Third Assault Brigade, first via their own body cams and then his own as he embeds with the troop aiming to recover the village of Andriivka that sits on the border between Russia and Ukraine, having to navigate a dense forest where enemy fire could come from any direction. The distance to plant a Ukrainian flag on the land that’s largely been reduced to rubble wouldn’t take more than a hour to walk to during a time of peace, but every inch is contested when as much as a tactical benefit as Andriivka has, it also holds considerable symbolic value and Chernov plunges audiences right into the thick of combat.
The result is overwhelming, beyond compare as a visceral cinematic experience in conveying the chaos but equally extraordinary for capturing the human capacity to rise to the occasion for a cause greater than oneself as citizens conscripted for the cause speak selflessly about what they hope to protect and Chernov achieves the same in bringing their show of strength to the masses. After picking up the award for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival where “2000 Meters to Andriivka” where it premiered earlier this year, the film is now beginning its U.S. theatrical run and as Chernov was in Los Angeles, he spoke about what led him back into the breach, the equipment he could use to properly convey the experience that he had in a war zone and where he continues to find hope in a situation that remains bleak.
At what point did you want to do a follow-up to “20 Days in Mariupol” and know this was the path to pursue?
There was no question in doing a follow-up because right after I left Mariupol, and started assembling “20 Days in Mariupol,” at the same time I [continued] shooting. I went to Bucha, and then to Kharkiv, my hometown, to film this bombing, and then the first counter-offensive that happened, and then, of course, the summer counter-offensive in 2023, so at each point of making [the last film] and rolling it out for the wider audiences, I was shooting [both for] news and looking for another film to make. The summer counter-offensive in 2023 was such an important moment in history. Everybody spoke about it as the biggest military operation since the Second World War, and it was anticipated, and then it started, and the entire front line was on fire. So I was looking for a story that would symbolize that fight, and I followed several platoons.
At the same time, we were showing “20 Days in Mariupol” here in L.A. and New York, and in Paris and London, and it was just such a difficult and strange time, coming out of screenings and talking to people, [as well as] seeing all the amazing films that came out that year [such as] “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” and then flying back to Europe, crossing the border, getting to Kyiv, getting on a train back to the front line in Donbass, just being in a trench. That transition itself was unimaginable. It’s a 24-hour journey across time, or across space to another planet. But in my mind, I never left the cinemas, and the people who I spoke with [there], and when I came back here [to the U.S.], I never left the front lines. I was carrying all this in me. So I wanted to make a film to shorten the distance between these two worlds that I kept seeing, and feeling the split between. “2000 Meters to Andriivka” became a film about distances, about how a short distance can be so long, and how a distance that seems very far [such as] from the U.S. to Ukraine can be in fact very, very short.
There’s such a simple story to understand this very complex situation at the center, which is following Fedya as he attempts to plant this flag to reclaim a village for Ukraine. Was it something you could identify immediately to give audiences something to hold onto?
“20 Days in Mariupol” was mostly shot [with the original intention] as news dispatches, and then it was made into a film. Here, it was conceived as a film, and I was looking for a story that would make a good film and whether it’s a documentary or scripted, of course, you’re looking for a protagonist on the journey to a very specific and a very clear goal. We met Fedya’s platoon, and we saw the footage from the battlefield that they shot since the beginning of this operation and how they lost their friend Gagarin, which is in the film and seeing that forest on the map, squeezed between two minefields, with the village at the end of it, I knew that there was a film.
Of course, it’s luck that the story is so clear and [with] Michelle Mizner, the amazing editor and producer on this film and the previous one, all we needed to do was just to make sure we preserve that journey and make it clear for the audience. But of course, we didn’t know how it was going to end. I didn’t know if they were going to reach that village. I didn’t know if they were going to raise that flag and I’m embarking on that journey with these guys because you cannot just observe this journey from the distance to adequately be able to portray their pain and their loss, so we tagged along.
Not only did you not necessarily know where this was going, but did you actually know from the start how you could capture this in the way you wanted to with the technology that’s available?
Technology is amazing right now and [what’s available in] the documentary genre is advancing along with technologies of war. It’s scary and interesting to observe how those both technologies are advancing at the same time. When we came in, it was pretty normal by that time to record the battle on bodycams for battlefield analysis and for their YouTube channel, which they have frequently put out. What hasn’t been done before is to try to push that even further, to unite that footage with footage from drones and from other cameras. At a certain point in the film, [when the battle reaches] 600 meters, we already have seven cameras working simultaneously — two on the battlefield, and one of them is a 360° bodycam, so we can reframe the shot after, and two drones, two cameras in the headquarters watching the screens of the drones and the commanders that are analyzing the battle and communicating with those guys who carry the bodycams. And of course, there’s a camera with the medics [also]. That’s quite hard to craft, but again, Michel Mizner did an amazing job of making it clear for the audience. At the same time, it gives us a possibility to bring the audience the experience they’ve never felt before. We know how hard the First and Second World Wars were for soldiers. We could read about it and we would watch the films about it, but to experience it with them would be a very different story and that’s what we are trying to do.
The imagery becomes more sophisticated as the film goes on – you get more angles on the situation after starting only with bodycam footage and the visual language is more complex. That may have been a product of editing, but could you start to adjust to filming in such a fraught environment?
That was the intention [with the camera work] because you can’t introduce seven different mediums [immediately] — bodycam, mobile phone footage, drone, normal camera, kamikaze drones. All those are different cameras and the sound and perspective of them is very different. You can’t drop all that on an audience. You have to gradually bring it in. So the film starts from a single-point perspective, and the first scene from that perspective just for ten minutes to feel what the soldiers feel and see what they see. But slowly and gradually, throughout the film, we introduce more and more and more perspectives, and the audience learns the language that we’re using. By the time that we get to the 600-meter battle at the middle of the film, we don’t even notice anymore how many perspectives there are. We came in [as a camera crew] in the middle of the battle of Andriivka, so we didn’t join from the first day and for the beginning of the battle, we have less footage available. But as we came in, we added cameras and we started filming our main protagonists, so that was also one of the reasons why we developed the story gradually and it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
The time in the foxholes becomes a really moving part of the film when it allows you to talk to soldiers quite casually, and within the film, not only does it give a greater dimension to them than the role they’re serving in battle, but it offers much needed space from the action. Did you know how you could ultimately incorporate that into the film?
What we wanted the audience to feel is what it was like to be trapped together in those foxholes, in that little forest that is only one mile long. And that’s the beauty of this story — the more you zoom in, the more symbolic it becomes. If you look, everything that is in the film happens within that just one mile of narrow forest that is squeezed between two minefields, so it is claustrophobic, it is intense, but it is also very, very clear and in the moments when you stop and you hide from the bombs that are constantly falling around, from the drones that are buzzing above your head, and you don’t know who that drone belongs to, [wondering] if it belongs to Russians or the Ukrainian army, will it drop the grenade on your head or is it just observing? That fear and tension brings you closer to people who you are with.
You don’t talk about big things, you don’t talk about patriotism or future of the humanity or your country. You are just you and they are just them and those conversations are not interviews. I don’t do interviews. I just talk. Sometimes I forgot to record when I was talking, but the things you talk about are wives and children and the university that you went to. I studied at the rival university of this man [in the film] whose callsign is Freak, and that’s what we discussed. Those are things that make us human and having those conversations in a film was so essential because that is first and foremost my experience and it’s a real experience of war. If [those conversations] were not there, then it would all look like a game and there is a danger of detaching from the footage that is exciting and feels like a computer game. The purpose of this film is to see past headlines, numbers and the thrilling footage that we see in the social media [in short bursts] every day to get to the hearts of these men who are just like you and me, regular civilians whose home was attacked and made a decision to take a gun and to go to protect their home from the invasion of a murderous leader.
It is amazing that you don’t glorify the experience while showing how exhilarating it is and also how it isn’t filled with despair despite what a dire situation it is. How did you find the right tone for this?
I want to bring up one conversation that we have in a film with the chief of that platoon. At some point, I see all the destruction around us — a destroyed village and a destroyed forest, and I [asked him], “Why are you fighting for this? It’s all destroyed.” And he laughs, as he usually does with his irrational optimism that is so contagious, and says, “Everything grows back. This forest is growing back and these villages, when they are liberated, will be restored.” And I think to myself it may take generations to do that, but it is inevitable.
There’s another moment that never made it into the film, but it’s quite interesting when we jumped out of the armored vehicle and started our journey across this mile of forest. The battle for that mile of forest lasted for almost three months and it moved slowly from the bottom to the top to the village. And every part of the forest where the battle was destroyed by artillery, so you can see the stumps of the trees. There were no leaves or grass, but the beginning of the forest started growing back and by the time the battle reached the village, the beginning of that forest was already growing. It was green so nature started recovering immediately. I thought to myself, it’s quite scary. You walk and there are bodies everywhere or Russian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, but you see how these trees grow back — even from those bodies. The Russians came and they died and their bodies fed that forest that started growing back. So there was some strange hope in it that it is possible to survive. And if you look past last six months, where the entire political conversation is happening so intensively, and there are constant talks about possible peace, or in the worst-case scenario, a continuation of this war, we still see this hope in Ukrainians. We see how they want peace, but how at the same time they are always ready to fight for their safety.
What’s it been like to take the film around the world this time? I’ve heard it’s already screened in Ukraine.
We had an amazing screening during DocuDays festival in Kyiv and it was a huge cinema, 700 people watching it and crying and getting angry sometimes and gasping when they didn’t know what’s going to happen later. All of these guys were there and the families of fallen soldiers were also there, and they felt it. Fedya was there and spoke to the audience, and they felt the gratitude of the audience and respect for their tragedies. One of the soldiers — his call sign is 2-0 and we see him in the last battle for Andriivka, he is the one who [confronts] Russian soldiers and says “I’m 19, do you think it was my dream to fight with you? Why are you here?” and the Russian soldier says “I don’t know.” He lost both of his legs, but he came and my eyes were full of tears when I watched Fedya and other soldiers holding him up, and him standing in front of the audience on his prosthetic legs, with the audience standing and cheering for him, saying their thank you.
“2000 Meters to Andriivka” is now open in New York at Film Forum and opens on July 30th at the Monica Film Center. A full list of cities and dates is here.