Mstyslav Chernov, whose last feature, 20 Days in Maripul, won the Best Documentary Academy Award, has a follow-up to the war in Ukraine in “2000 Meters to Andriivka.” It embeds viewers directly into the frontlines, immersing us in the harrowing 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive through body cameras, drone footage, and courageous verité filmmaking that feels both modern yet timeless.
This self-reflective cinema verité documentary might be the “Restrepo” of the Ukraine war, “2000 Meters to Andriivka” is both observational and grim like Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s definitive documentary. Tbe documentary is shot with a lot of body cameras, like Geeta Gandbhir’s upsetting and gripping documentary The Perfect Neighbor from the same Sundance earlier this year. It is unfiltered access that feels like journalism in the purest form, showing what a day in the life in the trenches looks like.
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Depressing in its hopelessness, I have never seen a war documentary made like this, and it feels like a future technique on the verge of discovery. It plays less like traditional documentary filmmaking and more like unfiltered testimony. The brutality of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is solemn and reflective. One stunning aerial sequence shows Ukrainian flags raised over the rubble as journalists speak over battlefields, a jarring juxtaposition of the stark reality and foreign policy punditry. It’s the kind of moment that lingers long after the credits roll, cementing the stakes of the invasion with images that are haunting long after the documentary and have lingered in my mind.
“2000 Meters to Andriivka” is a searing testament to perseverance, grief, and resistance, revealing the Ukraine war as both claustrophobic dread and existential sacrifice, graphing its emotional faultlines between frontline soldiers and observations viewed both up close yet far away. Both raw and heartbreakingly personal, “2000 Meters to Andriivka” blurs the lines between observer and participant through its cinematography. It’s a rough experience, unflinching filmmaking, but so is war. And this is a haunting new standard for frontline war documentaries, one that sticks with you for a while.
2000 Meters to Andriivka is now playing in limited release.
