The Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov gained fame for his debut documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol, a PBS and The Associated Press production. He returns to portray the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine with 2000 Meters to Andriivka. His first film had an outstanding world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2024. The director would closely follow the Russian invasion of the city of Mariupol, in the north of Ukraine. His first feature would shock the audience for its frontality in showing the atrocities of war, especially the aggression on the civilian population in Mariupol. Two years after his acclaimed debut, Chernov shifts from the civilian perspective to the frontline with Andriivka. He documents the dispute between a Ukrainian battalion and the Russian army for the land of Andriivka, a village in the eastern part of the country.
The director’s second effort shares plenty of similarities with the former work. Chernov, a journalist, chooses the traditional journalistic approach to tackle the theme. He displays a handheld camera to immerse the viewer emotionally in that conflict. The introduction features a lengthy sequence in a devastated battlefield, where multiple Ukrainian soldiers combat a Russian troop. In those prolonged minutes, it is notable that the differences from 20 Days are the subjects’ focus, shifting from civilians in the urban area to soldiers in an isolated rural site. Hence, the director is not afraid to record the violence in the conflict. We see wounded combatants lying on the burnt and moody soil. It is unclear whether some of those privates are alive or have passed away from those injuries, once Chernov fades away from that sequence, and voice-overs the establishing of the central discussion of the documentary. The audience is about to accompany the battle for the village over two thousand meters (equivalent to a thousand and two hundred miles) of distance.
There, after the compelling introduction, which assumes a more traditional POV of the battlefield, the director resumes his stylistic approach. He rejects the lack of narration, and, like his last film, the director uses the narrative resource as an oversimplification of the explanations. Exactly like the first film, which 2000 Meters is a spiritual sequence to, rescues the director’s mannerisms, who leans towards the journalistic roots rather than a cinematographic language. It is a fact that documentary media share their origins with journalistic practices. However, it should stand on its own, exist for itself. Yet, Chernov relies on the exuberance of POV shots and a handheld camera combined with his voice to tell this story. Thus, it misses the subplots and the narrative focus of this story. Even though it has an explicit objective of documenting the territory’s confrontation with the dominance of a village, it shifts different perspectives and abandons the central subjects. The death of some combatants is a mere sidenote in this major picture of a territorial dispute, and the individuals are not as remarkable as they should be for emotional purposes.
In the last three years, multiple directors dared to denounce the invasion of Russia and portray the violence in the country. However, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker decides to impact the viewer through the imagery. Therefore, he does not compose the images; he chooses to display a raw illustration of this dispute. We see the burnt ground, the mood, the destroyed trees, and the tanks stuck in the land. He decides to let the images do the talking; in this sense, the statement is an empty reporting on the feelings of the battalions and the pains of observing your companions dying. Ironically, the most impactful image composition of the film is an aerial shot of a cemetery with dozens of tombstones and the Ukrainian flags flying. This frame alone speaks louder than the previous hour and forty minutes of exclusive recording of the front. In the few scenes that it organizes in a cinematographic manner, the film is noteworthy. Still, the director decides to follow the opposite route.
In the following effort, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Mstyslav Chernov demonstrates the same mannerisms of his past work and diminishes the impact of the story about the dispute of a village destroyed by the Russians in Ukrainian territory. Thus, it works better when it organizes the picture in a cinematographic manner, especially with well-composed framing. Ultimately, it is a film that depends on the realistic portrayal of its images to impact the viewer, but it lacks context and better writing to achieve its goal.
2000 Meters to Andriivka is now in limited theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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