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| Images courtesy of PBS Frontline |
Back in 2023, Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winning Associated
Press photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov emerged on the world stage as one of the
most boldly important living wartime-documentary filmmakers working today. At only forty years old, Chernov captured
both with his still photography and video work the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of
Dignity followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Initially a fine arts photographer whose experiences
helped transform his award-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol,
still perhaps the hardest yet most urgent film of the 21st century,
into a beautifully photographed and edited tapestry of scorching apocalyptic horrors
still very much alive today in Ukraine.
Following his Oscar win, the photojournalist instinctively returned to
his country at war, picking up where he and his crew left off.
Traveling alongside a Ukrainian platoon in the mist of a
counteroffensive operation to liberate the Russian-occupied village of
Andriivka, the new PBS Frontline documentary film 2000 Meters to Andriivka largely
composed of real-time bodycam footage of soldiers advancing up the Andriivka
forest line is many things. Maybe the
greatest example of wartime combat photography ever captured, maybe the most
powerfully evocative if not achingly lyrical expression of a country being
decimated by war, maybe the only possible companion piece to a documentary film
as hard and forever life-changing once seen as 20 Days in Mariupol, there
really aren’t enough adjectives to describe this pure experiential composition
of documentary filmmaking. There’s never
been a picture like it before and we’re unlikely to see one like it again as it
captures in real time the gradual erasure of one nation by a warring
neighbor.
Whereas 20 Days in Mariupol expressed what it meant
to be a civilian finding your city being bombed indiscriminately and either
flee or hide hoping you aren’t caught or hit by shelling, 2000 Meters to
Andriivka in contrast is about the soldier’s journey in entering the
frontline, defending and advancing and/or retreating depending on the manpower,
firepower or defensive measures available in the heat of battle. Edited by Michelle Mizner who also cut Chernov’s
previous documentary and largely shot by Chernov himself, as the film intercuts
between soldiers and generals navigating the counteroffensive and flushing
enemy fighters out of mortar holes and dugouts we get a broad portrait of the
platoon as the camera warms up to characters we later learn over Chernov’s
voiceover narration later died in battle.
Compounded with Sam Slater’s minimalist, experimental score featuring a
war drum and Austrian sound designer Jakob Vasak’s electroacoustic instrument
the Kobophon with original field recordings integrated into the mix, the
soundscape and use of montage washes over you like a Tsunami in slow motion
that you’re aware of drowning you but there’s nothing you can do to fight the onslaught.
Take for instance a funeral sequence near the end where Chernov’s
drone camera hovers over a cemetery of soldiers as news recordings about the
counteroffensive casts doubt on the military’s success. From here, Chernov’s drone silently glides
over forests and trees, cities and buildings and neighborhoods that have been
reduced to immobile silence. A montage
that remains wordless for several minutes, a technique only used at the tail
end of 20 Days in Mariupol, the sequence reminds of the haunted and
horrified opening prologue of Viktor Kossakovsky’s Anthropocene documentary Architecton
also displaying war torn Ukraine. It’s
a haunted and thoroughly galvanizing sequence which posits Mstyslav Chernov alongside
such filmmakers as Godrey Reggio and Ron Fricke where the use of sound, picture
and editing work together in tandem to provide a pure unblinking portrait of
devastation.
An anvil of the documentary form that falls upon you from on
high, crashing through you and leaving you either dead or badly wounded, 2000
Meters to Andriivka initially premiered in January of 2025 at the Sundance
Film Festival followed by a limited theatrical run in the United States in July
and an August release in Ukraine. As of
last Friday November 28th, the film dropped online in full on PBS
Frontline as well as YouTube in 4K UHD for free where viewers around the world
can easily access it. The kind of film
you don’t pick up easily or casually as it is one hundred percent real warfare
edited into something watchable from the comfort of our homes, 2000 Meters
to Andriivka is powerful stuff that is sure to forever change the face of
war in motion pictures. It doesn’t get any
more immediate than this with the war in Ukraine still ongoing with some of the
most startling and striking wartime photography ever captured, Chernov’s
mournful if not funereal documentary picture is profoundly moving and often
nerve-wracking portrait of what it really means to defend your country.
--Andrew Kotwicki
