Jan 20—The Official YouTube channel of the American film festival Sundance released Mstyslav Chernov’s first presentation of his new documentary, 2,000 meters to Andriivka. 

Mstyslav Chernov is a war correspondent, videographer, and writer from Kharkiv. After the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, he and his team of journalists from Associated Press created a documentary 20 Days in Mariupol that covered Moscow troops’ war crimes in the city. They were the last independent journalists left in the city. The movie got Ukraine and Chernov’s team their first Oscar. 

Chernov’s new documentary will cover the story of one unit of the Ukrainian army during a failed counteroffensive in Donetsk Oblast. The unit’s mission is to get through two kilometers of the forest, heavily fortified by Russian forces, and liberate a village called Andriivka from Russian occupation. The more soldiers move through the ruins of their land, the more they realize the challenge they’re facing. 

“Today, I understood my wife, the way she worries about me because today, I started to worry about her,” one of the soldiers said. 

Chernov was with the unit when they were doing this combat mission. 

The documentary will be playing in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival from Jan 23 to Jan 31. 

Read more

“The reaction to the movie changes from country to country. They usually have two questions, “How to help?” and “When will you show this to Russians?” — Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov at the Kharkiv premiere of 20 Days of Mariupol