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The Guardian
30-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
2000 Meters to Andriivka review – war in Ukraine as an eerie, pin-sharp waking nightmare
Two years ago, the Ukrainian photojournalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov stunned us with his eyewitness documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, about Russia's brutal assault on the southern Ukrainian port city. His new film is if anything more visceral, with waking-nightmare images captured in pin-sharp 4K digital clarity. It is a moment-by-moment account of his experience embedded with Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade in 2023 (one of them appears to be a Brit) during Zelenskyy's highly anticipated counteroffensive, making a gruelling journey along what amounts to a two-kilometre corridor of 'forest'. In fact, it is scrubland offering no real cover – but it is free of Russian mines, unlike the areas of farmland either side. The forces brutally fight every metre of the way, heading for the symbolic liberation of the largely ruined village of Andriivka in north-eastern Ukraine. They are carrying a precious Ukrainian flag, and it is their mission to fix this to any broken bit of wall they can find, to proclaim their national spirit is not dead. They are in a wasteland, as one says: 'It's like landing on a planet where everyone is trying to kill you. But it's the middle of Europe.' Chernov is armed only with a camera, to the astonishment of many soldiers he encounters, and the film was constructed by editing his footage together with that of solders' helmet cameras and drone material. Chernov shows us how drones are now utterly ubiquitous in war, delivering both the pictures and the assaults. That is the ultra-modern, even postmodern aspect of this film, but it coexists with an eerie resemblance to the eastern front of the first world war. Chernov, in one of his murmuringly subdued voiceovers, comments: 'The smell of death, explosives and freshly cut trees.' The wrecked landscape does indeed look like 1916, and Chernov does not scruple to show us real dead bodies (but spares us the ultimate horror of the corpses' faces). When the intertitles flash up the grim advances – 1,000 meters to go, 300 metres to go – it is like the cricket-style scoreboard for the Battle of the Somme in Richard Attenborough's film of Oh! What a Lovely War: 'Ground gained: nil.' The most heart-wrenching moments come when Chernov interviews soldiers in a quiet moment, their twentysomething faces alive with intelligence – and in a sombre voiceover tells us how they were killed four or five months later. It is a (repeated) flourish that might be considered on the verge of bad taste, but Chernov manages it with such unflinching conviction. Since the events of this film, Russia has counter-counterattacked and retaken Andriivka; though now we hear Trump has soured on Putin. A Ukrainian soldier surveys the wreck of Andriivka and says: 'Everything will grow back.' 2000 Meters to Andriivka is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 August.
Times
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Oscar-winner who risked his life to make the most powerful war film yet
'F ilm how beautiful I am,' says Bors, a young Ukrainian soldier, larking about in a trench for the camera. Seconds later Russian artillery hits and a suicide drone darts overhead, exploding in a fireball. Two men are dead. The rest of the team pile into an armoured car, but it gets stuck in the mud so they dive into another trench. The Russians start to pick them off and Bors screams, all four limbs shattered. 'That's it for me, brother,' he says. 'Bandage it and crawl,' says his comrade. His friend leaves to get help. 'I'll come back,' he says. 'Don't even think about blowing yourself up.' This is the opening scene of 2000 Metres to Andriivka , the extraordinary new film about Ukraine's Third Assault Brigade's attempt to liberate the village of Andriivka in 2023, a strategically important Russian base near the eastern city of Bakhmut. It would be dramatic enough if it were a feature film or a video game, but this is a documentary, much of it culled from footage shot by soldiers on the front line. It was directed by Mstyslav Chernov, the Ukrainian director and journalist who won an Oscar for the harrowing documentary 20 Days in Mariupol and a Pulitzer prize for his reporting from that besieged city.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘2000 Meters To Andriivka' Trailer: Devastating, Intimate Depiction Of Ukraine War From Oscar Winner Mstyslav Chernov
EXCLUSIVE: One of the most visceral and terrifying depictions of war ever recorded is about to make its way to U.S. theaters. 2000 Meters to Andriivka, director Mstyslav Chernov's follow up to his Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, opens in New York (at Film Forum) on July 25 through PBS Distribution. It opens a week later in Los Angeles (at Laemmle Monica), with a national rollout to follow; in December the documentary will make its broadcast premiere on the PBS series Frontline. More from Deadline Oscar-Winning Director Mstyslav Chernov Documents Ferocious Battle For Ukrainian Village In '2000 Meters To Andriivka' – Sundance Studio Doc Talk Podcast: Oscar Winner Mstyslav Chernov On Being In Oval Office For Trump-Zelensky Showdown, Plus CPH:DOX's Niklas Engstrøm Trump Can Resume Restricting AP's Access To Oval Office And Other Spaces, Appeals Court Rules The film, documenting the intense, sanguinary attempt by Ukrainian soldiers to retake a village seized by Russian invaders, won Chernov the directing award for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance. It also won the prestigious F:ACT Award at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen; the City of Poznań Freedom Award from Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland; Best International Documentary at Doc Aviv in Tel Aviv, and a trio of awards at the DocuDays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Chernov's native Ukraine. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above. 20 Days in Mariupol focused on Russia's brutal assault on civilians in the early days of its full-scale invasion in February-March 2022. 2000 Meters to Andriivka, meanwhile, trains a lens on Ukrainian forces – 'who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of their land,' as a synopsis notes. 'Amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, Chernov and his AP colleague Alex Babenko follow a Ukrainian brigade battling through approximately one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. Weaving together original footage, intensive Ukrainian Army bodycam video and powerful moments of reflection, 2000 Meters to Andriivka reveals with haunting intimacy, the farther the soldiers advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that, for them, this war may never end.' An estimated 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since Russia launched its unprovoked attack, according to the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The center estimates the number of Russian troops killed or wounded at nearly 1 million. Chernov spoke with Deadline's Doc Talk podcast in March, sharing some of what he learned from Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline. 'Everyone is incredibly tired, traumatized, exhausted,' he told us. 'They pool all the forces into standing their ground. But when you talk to them, when you talk about their motivation, about their vision of ending this war, you'll always get the same answer: 'I want to make sure that my children will not fight this war.'' Among his many awards, Chernov has won the Oscar, the DGA Award, and the 2023 Pulitzer Prize (shared with his AP colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko, and Lori Hinnant). Before Russia's full-scale invasion, he covered the war in Donbas, as well as the Maidan Revolution (Revolution of Dignity) in Ukraine, the downing of flight MH17, Syria's civil war, and the Battle of Mosul in Iraq. Despite enduring grave threats to his life making 20 Days and Mariupol and 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Chernov is continuing to document the war in Ukraine. 'We've recently started shooting another film near the frontline,' he told us. 'We realized that we can't [approach it the way] we have done a year ago because the warfare itself has changed. It's much more roboticized, it's much more inhuman and the weapons even more precise. And it's all about drones now. [Drones were] important back then in 2023, but right now we mostly see drone fighting and people just following these drone strikes and crawling and hiding from these all-seeing eyes of death that are watching us from the sky, the mechanical death we've invented.' 2000 Meters to Andriivka is directed by Mstyslav Chernov, who also serves as the film's cinematographer. Producers are Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath; co-producer is Alex Babenko, who also supplied additional cinematography. Michelle Mizner edited the film. The score is composed by Sam Slater. Watch the 2000 Meters to Andriivka trailer above. [youtube Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Justin Theroux To Jason Ritter Remembering Michael Madsen: A Career In Photos
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ukraine's top general says Ukraine stopped Russian advances in northern Sumy region
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's forces stopped Russian advances in the border area of the northern region of Sumy this week, the country's top general said in a statement on Thursday. "The advance of Russian troops in the border areas of Sumy region has been halted, and the line of combat has stabilised," Oleksandr Syrskyi said in the statement about his visit to the front. Russia in April said it had ejected Ukrainian forces from the western Russian region of Kursk, and President Vladimir Putin has ordered his forces to follow up by carving out a "buffer zone" in the adjoining Sumy region. After Russian advances there in early June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his troops were repelling the attacks and had recaptured the village of Andriivka. Syrskyi said additional fortifications and defensive measures, including creating anti-drone corridors, should be done more promptly in the area. "The primary tasks are to strengthen fortifications and build up the system of engineering and fortification barriers," he said.
Reuters
04-06-2025
- General
- Reuters
Sumy city under threat as Russian forces advance, Ukraine says
June 4 (Reuters) - Russian forces have widened the frontline in Ukraine's northern region of Sumy, officials and analysts said, and Moscow said it captured another village on Tuesday, bringing the region's capital closer to within the range of frontline drones. The advance towards the city of Sumy - the administrative center of the Sumy region - comes as Kyiv showed its ability to continue fighting by conducting a series of strikes in recent days, hitting Russian strategic bombers and the Crimean Bridge. Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Turkey for peace talks on Monday where Moscow said it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv cedes big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army. On Tuesday, Russia's defense ministry said its forces took control of Andriivka, after capturing several other villages in recent days. Kyiv said Russian artillery attack on the city of Sumy killed four people and injured 28. The head of the military administration of the Sumy region, which lies north of Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the region's defence strategy. "The situation in the border area of Sumy region remains complex, dynamic, but controllable," the head of the military administration, Oleh Hryhorov, said on Facebook. "The Russian army is constantly shelling border villages, hitting residential buildings, farms, and civilian infrastructure facilities." The dual advance with fierce frontline fighting and missile and drone strikes in Sumy hinders Ukraine's defence abilities along in the southeast Donbas region, of which Moscow is seeking full control, military analysts say. On Monday, Ivan Shevtsov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian brigades fighting in Sumy, told Ukrainian national broadcaster that Russian forces had captured about 15 km (9 miles) along the frontline, going 6-7 km deep. If Russian advances take the town of Yunakivka, Shevtsov said, the city of Sumy will be under a direct threat. The Ukrainian Deep State blog of analysts who track the front line using open sources said Russian forces are moving to within 20-25 km of Sumy, putting the city within a range of shorter-range attack drones. Reuters could not independently verify the Russian claim of capturing Andriivka and Ukraine's General Staff made no references to the village in its evening battlefield report. DeepState said early on Wednesday that Andriivka was now in Russian hands. Over the weekend, Sumy's authorities ordered mandatory evacuation of 11 additional villages due to escalating Russian attacks. Shevtsov said Russia wants to completely capture the Sumy region, not just make a small incursion. "Just ... like other regions in eastern Ukraine," he added.
