Latest news with #2000MeterstoAndriivka
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bucha massacre documentary wins gold at New York Festivals 2025
A documentary by the Ukrainian service of Radio Liberty about the massacres in Bucha during the Russian occupation has won a gold award at the New York Festivals 2025 television awards. It took the prize in the Human Rights category. Source: Radio Liberty Details: The documentary, How Russian Forces Hunted Down A Ukrainian Shopkeeper In Bucha Bloodbath, is the second part of an investigation by journalist Dmytro Dzhulai into the massacres in Bucha during the Russian occupation in March 2022. It examines the circumstances of the executions and names Russian military personnel who may be involved in the killing of local self-defence member Oleksii Pobihay. The winners were announced on the evening of 22 May in New York during the virtual Storytellers gala. Other laureates this year included Al Jazeera English, Voice of America, ABCTV, PBS, BBC and Deutsche Welle, among others. Background: In March 2025, a documentary by Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, won an award at the CPH:DOX documentary film festival in Denmark. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Always' Review: Deming Chen's Strikingly Confident Debut Plays Like a Long Visual Poem
Gorgeously rendered in picturesque cinematography, 'Always' offers a meditative and patient look into the life of an adolescent poet in rural China. But the poetry is not limited to the protagonist's words, which appear as intertitles throughout the film; it is also there in the images captured of him, his family, classmates and his small village and its people. This is a confident and striking debut for filmmaker Deming Chen that should establish him as a new and vital voice in the documentary genre. The film opens in color, then turns to black and white as if going back to a more innocent time. Later in the film, the color returns, desaturated and faint though beautiful, marking the passage of time. Chen, who acts as his own cinematographer, followed his protagonist Gong Youbin from the age of 9 to 13. In this slice-of-life portrait, Chen shows how childhood experiences can shape someone, illustrating how a childhood passion might expand their horizons without necessarily becoming a lifelong vocation. More from Variety Deming Chen's 'Always' Wins Main Prize at CPH:DOX as Mstyslav Chernov Nabs F:ACT Award for '2000 Meters to Andriivka' How to Navigate the Political Documentary Market: 'Audiences Want to Watch Something That Engages With the World Around Us' Alex Gibney-Produced Documentary About Palestinian-American Scholar Edward Said Among Winners at CPH:DOX Industry Awards The filmmaker wanted to make a film about poetry. Then Gong decided to stop writing. That initial instinct remains intact, as the images he captured maintain the aura of poetry. This change of course allowed for the inclusion of the writing of Gong's classmates, making a film more expansive as a bevy of adolescents find their voices and are influenced by the terrain and the economic hardship of their surroundings. Whether confronting their tough realities or fleeing into a world of dreams, their poems give 'Always' its beating heart. Still, Gong remains at the center of the story. He lives in a multigenerational household with his father and grandparents. The patriarch had his arm amputated in an accident that hindered his ability to provide for his family. All three generations work together, in the house, on the farm and in the fields. They might be living in poverty and seeking government subsidies, but this is a household marked by perseverance and humor. Gong and his family members are aware of the filmmakers, even mention the filming, yet remain largely unselfconscious in front of the cameras. The film doesn't ask for sympathy for this family or present them as objects of pity. Rather, it patiently shows them living and thriving despite hardship. A trauma evident in Gong's life is the fact his mother ran away when he was very young. Though it's implied that she may have wanted to escape the harsh economic conditions that her husband's disability exacerbated, the answer never becomes clear to Gong. In a poignant scene, Chen asks him about his mother, with the camera following him escaping and trying to hide under a bale of hay. Gong might not be able to articulate the impact of this abandonment in words, but 'Always' renders it painfully clear. This film is also about landscape and environment. The camera painstakingly takes in Gong's surroundings: fields of crops, mountains half-hidden by fog, insects moving in soil, the faint dust of the stars at night. Most passionately, it shows the elements these people are working with. The land gives them life. There's no didacticism about climate change; 'Always' just shows that the land and what it gives is how people thrive. Some of these achingly beautiful images look like paintings come to life briefly on celluloid. The dialogue is sparse in this slow cinema exercise. It might test patience but also rewards those who give in and embrace its rhythm, taking their time looking at every corner of its beautiful frames. In using both words and images as poetry, Chen has made a film about the end of childhood that beautifully captures that stage in all its complexities and beauty. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Always' Review: Deming Chen's Strikingly Confident Debut From Plays Like a Long Visual Poem
Gorgeously rendered in picturesque cinematography, 'Always' offers a meditative and patient look into the life of an adolescent poet in rural China. But the poetry is not limited to the protagonist's words, which appear as intertitles throughout the film; it is also there in the images captured of him, his family, classmates and his small village and its people. This is a confident and striking debut for filmmaker Deming Chen that should establish him as a new and vital voice in the documentary genre. The film opens in color, then turns to black and white as if going back to a more innocent time. Later in the film, the color returns, desaturated and faint though beautiful, marking the passage of time. Chen, who acts as his own cinematographer, followed his protagonist Gong Youbin from the age of 9 to 13. In this slice-of-life portrait, Chen shows how childhood experiences can shape someone, illustrating how a childhood passion might expand their horizons without necessarily becoming a lifelong vocation. More from Variety Deming Chen's 'Always' Wins Main Prize at CPH:DOX as Mstyslav Chernov Nabs F:ACT Award for '2000 Meters to Andriivka' How to Navigate the Political Documentary Market: 'Audiences Want to Watch Something That Engages With the World Around Us' Alex Gibney-Produced Documentary About Palestinian-American Scholar Edward Said Among Winners at CPH:DOX Industry Awards The filmmaker wanted to make a film about poetry. Then Gong decided to stop writing. That initial instinct remains intact, as the images he captured maintain the aura of poetry. This change of course allowed for the inclusion of the writing of Gong's classmates, making a film more expansive as a bevy of adolescents find their voices and are influenced by the terrain and the economic hardship of their surroundings. Whether confronting their tough realities or fleeing into a world of dreams, their poems give 'Always' its beating heart. Still, Gond remains at the center of the story. He lives in a multigenerational household with his father and grandparents. The patriarch had his arm amputated in an accident that hindered his ability to provide for his family. All three generations work together, in the house, on the farm and in the fields. They might be living in poverty and seeking government subsidies, but this is a household marked by perseverance and humor. Gong and his family members are aware of the filmmakers, even mention the filming, yet remain largely unselfconscious in front of the cameras. The film doesn't ask for sympathy for this family or present them as objects of pity. Rather, it patiently shows them living and thriving despite hardship. A trauma evident in Gong's life is the fact his mother ran away when he was very young. Though it's implied that she may have wanted to escape the harsh economic conditions that her husband's disability exacerbated, the answer never becomes clear to Gong. In a poignant scene, Chen asks him about his mother, with the camera following him escaping and trying to hide under a bale of hay. Gong might not be able to articulate the impact of this abandonment in words, but 'Always' renders it painfully clear. This film is also about landscape and environment. The camera painstakingly takes in Gong's surroundings: fields of crops, mountains half-hidden by fog, insects moving in soil, the faint dust of the stars at night. Most passionately, it shows the elements these people are working with. The land gives them life. There's no didacticism about climate change; 'Always' just shows that the land and what it gives is how people thrive. Some of these achingly beautiful images look like paintings come to life briefly on celluloid. The dialogue is sparse in this slow cinema exercise. It might test patience but also rewards those who give in and embrace its rhythm, taking their time looking at every corner of its beautiful frames. In using both words and images as poetry, Chen has made a film about the end of childhood that beautifully captures that stage in all its complexities and beauty. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Becoming Led Zeppelin' Has Rocked the Box Office by Treating It Like a Secret Concert Event
In 2019, director Bernard MacMahon stood in front of film buyers at Cannes and discussed his love of Led Zeppelin. The director of a little-seen music documentary 'American Epic,' he had been selected by the '70s rock gods to tell their story in a rock-doc, something the collective of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and the late John Bonham had never before agreed to do. He had been entrusted with enormous responsibility by icons who had been particularly selective about their legacy. At the time, he didn't even have footage to screen to the buyers. Two years later, MacMahon's film 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' screened as a work-in-progress at Venice. The song remained the same; as IndieWire's review suggested at the time, the film wasn't ready for primetime, and it sat without a buyer. Sony Pictures Classics, which had been following the film from the beginning, saw it again in summer 2024 after it had been reworked. The distributor knew back in 2019 that Zeppelin giving their blessing was special and that it had an audience, but only if the film was right. More from IndieWire CPH:DOX Winners Led by 'Always,' '2000 Meters to Andriivka,' and More Academy Apologizes for Omitting Hamdan Ballal's Name After 600 Academy Members Criticize Its Initial Response to Attack on Filmmaker Now after a release this February, 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' has received a whole lotta love and has surpassed $10 million at the North American box office. It's one of the highest-grossing documentaries at the box office domestically in the last two years, currently just behind last year's 'Piece by Piece' and the right wing satire 'Am I Racist?' And worldwide, it's already at $14.3 million with the likelihood that it will surpass $15 million globally. Roughly $4.7 million of that haul was generated in IMAX screenings, including a $3 million opening weekend that was IMAX's biggest exclusive opening for a music film to date. It was a target of IMAX's after it was acquired by SPC, and it proved a good bet. It plays again on over 200 IMAX screens for one night only on April 2. The film has exceeded expectations for SPC, but the organic success 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' has generated has been through an unconventional and carefully calculated marketing campaign. SPC first began showing teaser trailers ahead of IMAX showings of 'Venom: The Last Dance' last October, but the distributor wouldn't even announce the movie's existence until two months later in December. It generated mystique and online buzz as a result, and the only reviews of it were the tepid ones out of Venice from years earlier. When December rolled around, SPC immediately put tickets on sale for showings as though it was an audience buying concert tickets months in advance of a show. It generated $2 million in advance ticket sales, and only then did SPC announce the additional IMAX only screenings beginning on February 7. Press was part of the process, but not critics. 'Becoming Led Zeppelin' wasn't screened for critics in advance to create a communication breakdown. Instead, the distributor looked to even bigger evangelists who might ramble on about what they saw. With the band themselves not involved, the Counting Crows and Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters were among musicians who saw the film at an early screening. A similar screening in Nashville with local musicians had a similar impact. SPC bought ads on Howard Stern's radio show and, by January, got him talking about the movie, turning their simple one-minute ad buy into a 20-minute segment. The film was also heavily promoted on the radio, with the film screened for a number classic rock radio DJs across the country who spent months talking it up. Several stations also held private screenings for select listeners and then aired their reactions to the film coming out of the theater. Suddenly Zeppelin was back in the cultural ethos. 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Whole Lotta Love' returned to the Billboard charts for the first time in decades. 'Whole Lotta Love' was featured in a Nike Super Bowl ad coincidentally the same weekend the movie opened wide. And audiences were wowed by the sound quality, the deeper dive history that befuddled even hardcore fans, and the fact that MacMahon's film featured full songs, something that you generally get only in snippets in other music docs. The demand for the film is real. Just don't get trampled under foot on your way to the theater. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
In ‘2000 Meters to Andriivka,' Oscar winner takes viewers back to Ukraine's front lines
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The day Mstyslav Chernov won the BAFTA for his documentary '20 Days in Mariupol' was the day he learned two soldiers he knew had been killed in combat. They were primary subjects of his new film '2000 Meters to Andriivka,' a harrowing portrait of modern warfare that puts audiences on the front lines of the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. 'The film changed along the way,' Chernov, a videojournalist with The Associated Press, said last week after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 'From a story of the success of that operation it became a story of loss, of memory, of the price that soldiers pay for every single inch of the land. And that's where the name came from.' Coming back to Park City, Utah, with a new film has been a sobering, full circle moment for Chernov. It's the place where he first showcased '20 Days in Mariupol" two years ago. Although he received the highest honors a journalist and a filmmaker can get for his work, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar included, it's for reportage on a war in his home country that won't end and that he can't stop covering. The AP spoke to Chernov about '2000 Meters to Andriivka,' a co-production between the AP and PBS Frontline, the cognitive dissonance of whiplashing between a movie release and the front lines as well as his responsibility to Ukraine. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity. AP: Two years ago at Sundance, you were eager to go back to Ukraine. Was this already on your mind that you wanted to show the soldiers? CHERNOV: I gave a lot of thought after I left Mariupol. Do I want to continue doing what I was doing? We felt a lot of trauma and a lot of loss, guilt even, that we didn't do enough. But then again, that tragedy you go through, the tragedy of people who you're filming, it doesn't let you to just stop doing what you do. You always want to do more and you actually can't stop. At every point in this journey I was also editing '20 Days in Mariupol' and then it went on to screen all over the world. The response was great, but more I felt that response and more I saw that things are not changing, more I wanted to go back and to continue shooting, and that's what I did. At some point in summer of 2023, when Ukraine had a highly anticipated and very important counteroffensive, we also had our theatrical release for '20 Days in Mariupol.' So from LA, where at Laemmle Cinema, you would see 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' and '20 Days in Mariupol' posters and (after) speaking to the public, I would fly back to Poland, drive to the front line and start shooting this film. The story of Andriivka captured me so much that I would go back and keep following the platoon. And the tragedy was that as more time passed more people who we initially filmed on the journey to Andriivka have died. AP: With '20 Days in Mariupol' you found yourself in situations and knew to keep shooting. Here, you went in knowing you wanted to make a film. How did that change what you were doing? CHERNOV: Making '20 Days in Mariupol' and seeing the impact it ultimately had, seeing how big the audience was, made me think that the impact of journalism could be complemented with an impact of documentary filmmaking and that combination, if you can find the right balance between those two approaches, could be very powerful. The form of the cinema is much more long lasting than the news. As important as journalism is, unfortunately, there's just so much of things happening in the world, so many important stories, that it takes extraordinary efforts to keep someone's attention on the story, especially if that story is important to you personally. And the story of Andriivka and the soldiers who are trying to get there is personally very important to me. AP: This film puts audiences on the front line in ways that we're only used to seeing in fictional war films. How were able to do that? CHERNOV: Technology is changing. The audience is changing. So the medium of documentary that talks about important current events has to change as well. To be able to catch up, we constantly need to search for new forms, for new ways of telling the story, for new visual solutions to that. The making of '2000 Meters to Andriivka,' the approach is experimental. We are trying to show modern warfare the way no one has done it before or since. Of course there are elements that are classic for the documentary, but I also wanted the story to be so immersive, so on the ground, so experiential for the audience, that they forget that they are watching a narrative fiction film or a documentary. Then when they reach the end of the film, when they realize that everything they just saw was real, it would hit them even harder. AP: You gave one of the all-time great Oscar speeches. Was Andriivka heavy on your mind when you took that stage? CHERNOV: I was thinking about all the boys, yes, when I was on stage. There'd been so many things happening in the background when we were sitting in that beautiful place with all the movie stars and seeing the speeches that they were giving. I had got hundreds of messages of people who were telling me what to say on the stage, all important. I had a feeling that 40 million Ukrainians, if I will be lucky to go on that stage, will be watching me and every single word that will be said. There is a responsibility, a responsibility to journalism and a responsibility to me being Ukrainian, the responsibility to the people of Mariupol and responsibility to these soldiers that I was, by that time, filming for almost a year. AP: What has all of this meant to friends at home, to the people of Ukraine? CHERNOV: After the premiere, we received a lot of messages or just comments on social media that it is so timely to have a film like that when there are almost no reports, either journalistic or documentary from the front line from the perspective of a soldier. Partially because the interest has shifted elsewhere. Partially because it has become impossible to work at the front line because of the drones, because of the how precise and deadly weapons are and because journalists have become targets. I think people are just grateful for that. They say, thank you for showing that perspective and thank you for reminding the world about Ukraine, that it is not just a political chip in a bargaining, that it is actually real people. And that's what we have to keep in mind, that these are real people. These are not numbers and not distances. ___ For more coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, visit: Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press
