Oscar-winning war chronicler Mstyslav Chernov embeds with a Ukrainian unit in their last-ditch effort to reclaim a village, in a nerve-shredding reckoning with the Russian invasion’s relentless toll.
2000 Meters to Andriivka 2025
2000 metriv do Andriyivky
Familiar locations and the stretches between them can seem warped in surreal ways during wartime. The Ukrainian fighters of the 3rd Assault Brigade can only inch through the few thousand meters remaining to retake a village, measuring the distance by pauses between explosions and enemy trenches.
Mstyslav Chernov, a multiformat journalist whose prior documentary 20 Days in Mariupol won an Academy Award, has chronicled Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since it began. He joins frontline troops in their perilous 2023 counteroffensive push to fly the blue and yellow flag over Andriivka – if, amid the widespread destruction, there is any brick remaining to raise it from.
Reclaiming the village’s name is considered enough, in a struggle that is as much for self-determination as it is for territory. Battle footage from helmet cameras makes for a queasily immersive experience in a film also haunted by reflections, as men who say they never wanted to become soldiers discuss their lives through a lens of uncertain survival. This is not a trumpet for glory, but a demonstration of resilience in the face of impossibility. — Carmen Gray