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Oscar-winning Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov has a new documentary Critic Elena Smolina explains how ‘2000 Meters to Andriivka’ returns lived experience to our conversation about Russia’s invasion

Source: Meduza

Last year, Mstyslav Chernov won an Oscar for his documentary about Russia’s siege of Mariupol. His next film, “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” is now screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where “20 Days in Mariupol” had its world premiere two years earlier. Chernov’s new documentary captures the Ukrainian military’s attempt to retake Andriivka, a village outside Bakhmut. In September 2023, after a months-long operation, Ukrainian forces eventually liberated Andriivka, though the village later fell again to Russian troops. Film critic Elena Smolina explains how “2000 Meters to Andriivka” manages to restore intimate, lived experience to our conversation about the war in Ukraine.

In 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Mstyslav Chernov uses the story of a single village’s liberation to capture the true human cost of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive.

Andriivka is just 10 kilometers (about six miles) from Bakhmut. The only thing that separates the village from the film’s protagonists — the men of Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade — is a narrow strip of forest surrounded by minefields. It’s a two-minute drive, a 10-minute jog. But, as Chernov says in his narration, distance is meaningless here; time, which stretches and contracts in sync with the enemy’s mortar fire, is what matters.

Like 20 Days in Mariupol, which won last year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Chernov’s new film is divided into chapters. His timeline for the siege of Mariupol was measured in days. In Andriivka, Chernov uses meters. (For the Americans reading this: 2,000 meters is about 18 football fields.) The closer the soldiers and journalists get to the village, the higher the price they must pay to liberate each patch of land — now desolate.

A blend of objective and subjective camera perspectives shapes the film’s visual language. The most intense moments play out in the first-person, as soldiers with helmet-mounted cameras record their advance through the eerie, ominous forest. Chernov uses an objective perspective to film the conversations that break out between maneuvers when the men reveal bits about themselves. In one of the film’s best scenes, we meet a 46-year-old volunteer who vows to quit cigarettes for hand-rolled tobacco after the war. He’s reluctant to promise more. In a voiceover, we then learn that he will be fatally wounded five months later.

With its fellowship of soldiers navigating a bewitched forest, battling monsters, and reclaiming lost lands, the narrative arc evokes both The Lord of the Rings and American anti-war cinema, from Saving Private Ryan to Apocalypse Now. It’s no accident that the first chapter is structured around the search for “Fedya,” the 3rd Assault Brigade unit commander, who is meant to plant the Ukrainian flag in Andriivka if they manage to push through the woods. Rather than detracting from the film’s realism, these conscious nods to the artistic and mythological worlds of Tolkien, Spielberg, and Coppola accentuate Chernov’s brutal documentary authenticity.

Yes, a group of soldiers makes its way through the forest toward Commander Fedya, just as the troops searched for Private Ryan or Colonel Kurtz. But here, they die for real. As soon as we get to know any of the men in the film, Chernov’s narration informs us how much time they have left. Some will die in a few months. Others, like a 24-year-old soldier with the call sign “Gagarin,” will be killed on camera — before our very eyes.

The approach to Andriivka follows a classic dramatic arc, except the rising stakes aren’t just a storytelling device — they’re actual people whose lives can be reduced in an instant to a radio transmission announcing another corpse. The men of the 3rd Assault Brigade may resemble cinematic heroes (Fedya looks like he was plucked from a Hollywood war film), but they remain flesh and blood. Chernov’s film derives its striking, disorienting effect from the friction between artistic storytelling techniques and the unrelenting sense of documentary reality.

The soldiers’ perilous, slow advance toward tiny Andriivka is intercut with excerpts from Western media reports on Ukraine’s counteroffensive. As the men march forward, fully aware that reclaiming this empty land is largely symbolic, we hear: “The counteroffensive failed to achieve its objectives,” “Disappointment with the counteroffensive’s results,” and “How realistic is continued support for Ukraine when there is no plausible scenario for victory on the battlefield?” Set against this shrewd language is drone footage of an endless cemetery — a sea of graves with no visible end. Framed this way, the media’s words feel hollow, almost shameful.

By rejecting the normalization of war, the desensitization it induces, and the fatigue of endless coverage, Chernov’s film shifts the discourse on war and peace in Ukraine from cold numbers to intimate, lived experiences. This film does not — and cannot — offer a formula for peace, but it does insist on remembering that its protagonists are not mere arrows on a battlefield map.

“[Why] did you come here?!” “[Why] are you here at all?” These questions, repeated like a refrain, echo from Ukrainian soldiers as they confront Russian troops in the chaos of battle or as they take prisoners. No one has an answer. “I don’t know why we’re doing this,” mutters a captured soldier named Abdul Rakhmanov. It’s hard to imagine that concerns about NATO expansion were what brought him to Ukraine.

Fedya cannot escape the war; its battles invade his dreams and consume his days. “It’s a nightmare none of us can wake up from,” Chernov says in voiceover. And like nearly all nightmares, this one plays out in a surreal, inexplicable delirium.

Fedya and his men will reach Andriivka and find nothing but scorched earth — except for one survivor: a small calico cat. “Kitty, we’ll get you out of here. Hang in there; you’ll be a Cossack,” one of the soldiers tells the animal, tucking it into his backpack. The Ukrainian flag Fedya raises over a partially destroyed brick house won’t stay for long. Today, Andriivka is once again under Russian occupation.