Sundance Film Festival: 2000 Meters to Andriivka – Travelog to Hell

“I want to tell you a story. A story thousands of years old. A story of men fighting for their land.”

AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov, who won an Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol, brings us another harrowing experience of the Russia-Ukraine War with 2000 Meters to Andriivka. In his earlier film, he documented the early days of the war in a city under siege and bombardment. Now, he takes us to the deadly frontline. Chernov won the Directing Award for World Cinema, Documentary at Sundance.

Chernov (along with another camera operator, co-producer Alex Babenko) follow a military unit that is tasked with retaking the village of Andriivka. It is only two kilometers away (about a mile), but this journey takes months to complete. They make their way (sometimes only a few feet at a time) along a corridor of forest. The fields outside the corridor are heavily mined. As they try to move forward, there are Russian soldiers waiting. [Trigger warning: this is real battle footage, including severe injury and death.]

Much of the footage of the battles is taken from the helmet cameras of the soldiers. What we see is not much different than what went on in the trenches of World War I or the foxholes of World War II. It is soldiers who are trying to stay alive and keep their comrades alive, as they seek to protect their country.

The footage Chernov and Babenko capture is more personal, focusing on the Ukrainian soldiers. We get to know some of them. These are men who until the war started had other lives. Now they are trying to preserve their country. When the war started, they took up weapons. Chernov took up his camera, which is his weapon that tells the world of what is happening. When he first gets to the front line, someone there ponders where his gun is; all he brought was a camera?

But getting to know the soldiers is a two-edged sword. We may see their commitment. But at times, the film tells us, they were killed in future battles. The most devastating footage comes when we see one of the soldiers killed a few in feet front of us.

As if the noise and pace of battle isn’t enough, the film has an almost subliminal soundtrack, such as a constant drum beat, that pushes us to tense emotive levels. Some viewers may have reactions to such stress and tension.

It is pointed out at one point in the film that they aren’t really liberating villages. They are “liberating the names of places.” Those places have been utterly destroyed. Such is the case with Andriivka. When the soldiers finally arrive at this place they have fought so long and hard (and at great cost) to achieve, it is really nothing but rubble. And, we learn at the end, the Russians would be back to retake the rubble again.

Chernov doesn’t editorialize or moralize, but it seems evident that there is a futility to such warfare. The cost of that one mile strip of land seem far beyond its value, until you consider that an invader has stolen it away. He honors the bravery and sacrifice of the men he encounters as he accompanies them.

Viewers will want to honor Chernov and Babenko for their own bravery in bringing us this story. When they arrive at the unit’s headquarters, the commander tells them they “were idiots for wanting to go”. But Chernov has made it his mission to bring this war to the world in bold narratives.

This film would make an interesting double feature with Mr. Nobody Against Putin, which also won an award at Sundance. (You can read that review here.)

The film was produced the AP and PBS Frontline. No release or broadcast dates are yet announced.