When Mstyslav Chernov was on the awards trail last year, he couldn’t help but notice the incongruity. It was the year of Barbie and Oppenheimer but he was vying for an Oscar (which he eventually won) for 20 Days In Mariupol, a feature documentary chronicling the death and destruction caused by the Russians in a city in eastern Ukraine.
By then, Chernov was already working on what was to become his next feature, 2000 Metres to Andriivka (which received its European premiere at CPH:DOX earlier this week). The film follows a Ukrainian brigade taking part in a counter-offensive, trying to liberate the strategically important Russian occupied village, Andriivka.
“I actually remember very, very clearly that strange absurd feeling when you are premiering in Los Angeles, you’re talking to the audiences, you are seeing the beautiful cities of New York and Paris, you are talking to hundreds of people who lead peaceful lives…and then, in two days, you are coming back to Ukraine and you see a very different reality.”
The Ukrainian director adds that it sometimes felt as if he had fallen 100 years into the past and landed back in the First World War trenches.
“To address that feeling, the making of the film is my attempt to bring the audiences into the same experience I had when I was leaving the safety of European countries, the safety of the US – and travelling into those trenches…”
The mission shown in the new documentary is brutal and attritional. The Ukrainians are trying to take back a village that is only a couple of kilometres in the distance but every step through the scrubby fields and forest leading to the village is fiercely fought over. The casualties are enormous.
Chernov’s softly spoken voice-over, recorded after the events being depicted, is more like an elegy than a conventional piece of documentary narration. He will tell us that one of the soldiers we have just seen on camera “will be injured in a battle five months from now and will die.”
When the mission started in the autumn of 2023, it was seen as a chance for the Ukrainians to claw back their land quickly. Few anticipated just how tough the going would become.
“I think the film itself has changed over time,” the director reflects. Instead of the symbolic victories the Ukrainian army expected to celebrate, there was stasis, and yet more death and bloodshed.
“I wanted to bring the audience into the same state of mind I was when I was discovering these tragedies later. But, of course, we needed to do that in a way that was respectful to the soldiers who are talking – and also to give the feeling of the shock I had when I found out about their deaths.”
Chernov was at the BAFTA awards in London when he learned of the killing of one former comrade. “That was such a feeling of sadness and guilt and shock. I really wanted that feeling to get to the audience.”
This is brutally frank storytelling that doesn’t shirk away from showing the squalor and violence of the war. As a journalist over the last decade, Chernov has been on many other battlefronts. This have given him a “darker vision of war’s complexities.”
“Of course, I do bring my own vision into the film, my own pessimistic vision, my own personal feelings that I am tired of war.”
The Oscar-winning director is adamant, though, that his new documentary is about far more than just the futility of war.
“As I was looking about on the battlefield – but also in the editing room, also in the storytelling – I was looking for this balance between my probably more pessimistic vision and the absolute dedication, strength and hope that the Ukrainian soldiers have on this battlefield. If they don’t have those feelings, if they don’t carry those flags, if they don’t have the hope, if they don’t have that resilience, then Ukraine is gone as a country.”
Now, with President Donald Trump back in the White House and peace negotiations under way, the possibility looms that the land the Ukrainian soldiers died for might be traded back to Russia anyway.
“Recently, we are all spending a lot of time reading about the politics and the negotiations. We see all the events happening in these beautiful rooms…but we are talking about real people and memories and homes. Each metre of that land is someone’s blood.”
Chernov wants the names of the soldiers to be acknowledged and remembered. His film opens with a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms: “there were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity.”
In his own reporting from war zones, Cherrov takes inspiration from Hemingway’s work. “But that’s not the most important part,” he quickly adds. He regards Andriivka as a symbol of “all the frontline currently in Ukraine, all those thousands of kilometres…I was struck by how similar this story was visually, philosophically and morally to stories that were happening a hundred years ago, maybe more. I found that reflected in the work of Hemingway, of First World War painters like Otto Dix or Paul Nash. There were many inspirations we were drawing from when we were talking about this film and editing. Hemingway seemed to be the most important one because he also talked about names as symbols when everything is destroyed. When everything failed, you remain with the name of the place you are fighting for – and also with the names of the people you are fighting with.”
One late scene shows the funeral of one of the protagonists many hundreds of miles from the front line. It is now a tradition that when a procession with a coffin passes by, everybody kneels, whether they knew the dead person or not.
“Will this war be forever?” is one deeper question the film tries to ask. “It is not just a question about whether this war will be physically over tomorrow or the shooting stops. It’s a question about whether we as Ukrainians who have lived this trauma will carry this war until the end of our lives in our hearts.”
Dogwoof is handling sales on the documentary. The Ukrainian premiere is likely to be at Docudays in Kyiv in June The filmmakers are keen to get the documentary seen quickly. “Things are changing so fast. We want to be relevant. We want to be part of the conversation that is happening right now about Ukraine.”
Chernov has been encouraged by the reception at the first Copenhagen screenings which he feels has been even warmer than that given to 20 Days In Mariupol.
“These stories seem to be much closer now than they seemed two years ago…”
