A Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-Winning Director of New Ukrainian War Documentary ‘2000 Meters to Andriivka’

2000 Meters to Andriivka premieres on Tuesday, November 25 at 9:00 pm on WTTW and on the PBS app.

When WTTW last spoke to Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, he was going back and forth between red carpets to promote his film, 20 Days in Mariupol, and the battlefields of Ukraine, where he continued to document the war. Since then, Chernov and his team have won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film and produced a new film, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, which premieres on WTTW as a Frontline documentary on Tuesday, November 25 at 9:00 pm and will be available to stream on the PBS app.

In 20 Days in Mariupol, Chernov and a team of other Associated Press (AP) journalists documented the first 20 days of the Russian siege on the eastern Ukrainian city. That film focused primarily on the horrors of war from the perspective of civilians. In 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Chernov turns his camera toward frontline soldiers. He and his AP colleague Alex Babenko embedded with a Ukrainian brigade tasked with fighting its way through a narrow, 2000-meter strip of forest on the outskirts of the small, Russian-occupied village of Andriivka, located in the Eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass, the region that has served as the main battleground of the Russian invasion. Andriivka is just an hour’s drive from Chernov’s hometown of Kharkiv. There are quieter moments in the film, like those in which Chernov learns about the personal lives of the soldiers while they wait in trenches and foxholes, with the sounds of battle in the distance. But strikingly, the film also cuts to footage taken from the helmet-mounted cameras of the soldiers themselves, giving audiences an intense first-person vantage point of the war in Ukraine. WTTW spoke with Chernov about his new film.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Why did you want to make this documentary?

Mstyslav Chernov: Right now, documentary work never stops for me. It’s not even a decision to make a documentary. It’s just a continuation of the constant work of recording something that is incredibly personal and painful for me. In past years, it would be sporadic reporting. Right now, every minute of my life and my work goes into what is happening in Ukraine. When we left Mariupol, it was so painful and there was so much disappointment and tragedy and even guilt for not being able to do more. Everything I’ve done since then was to try to do more, to speak more about what’s important for my community. 

I was trying to find a story that would have an opposite motion to what I’ve experienced and what I’ve seen in Mariupol. I wanted to make a film that will show Ukrainians not only as victims of this invasion, but also as people who have agency, who have a choice to fight their fear, to fight a bigger enemy, and to push back. 

[During the 2023 counteroffensive], I started following several platoons and I started to film in several different regions. Parallel to that, I was traveling to the U.S. and Europe to promote 20 Days, so that was a very strange experience – these colliding worlds of public events and red carpets and trench warfare that seems like a story that’s 100 years old, or another planet. Even now when I’m screening this film, it still feels like I’m showing a sci-fi film. It’s so bizarrely different from our reality. So I was traveling back and forth, and we met Fedya [a soldier featured in the film] and he became our protagonist. As soon as I saw that little forest surrounded by minefields, and then little Andriivka at the end of it, and got to know more about Fedya’s platoon, I knew that story would encompass all that I’m trying to do. I didn’t know if they were going to liberate it. I didn’t know if everyone would survive by the end or if I’m going to be alive. But with documentary filmmaking, you’re just making a choice and just go with it until you either fail or until you have a film. 

Q: One of the most striking things about this film is the footage from soldiers’ helmet-mounted cameras. It puts the audience right into the perspective of these soldiers in a very intense way. Why did you feel it was important to include that footage?

Chernov: Ultimately, this film is an anti-war film. We never glorify war, never show it’s easy. I talk about war as something completely terrible, unacceptable, and horrifying. At the same time, we are showing the courage and the sacrifice of these men, so there is a paradox. And to get to that paradox, to get it truly right, you can’t just observe the battlefield from the drone, or walk through it after the battle is over. You need to be there and you need to see and feel what those civilians – yesterday, he was a student, another one was a truck driver, another one was a policeman – what all of them feel and go through when they are in those trenches. 

The medium of the helmet cameras is crucial for us. Something that became more common in every military brigade is they keep cameras for battlefield analysis. Having it in a film is a very different approach because there is time for the scene to unfold. There is time for the audience to feel, and just to be there with this man, be afraid, feel courage, feel loss, and all the range of emotions that goes through your head. So we carefully crafted every sequence in the film. Michelle Meissner, an amazing editor and producer behind this film and 20 Days, carefully crafted the narrative in a way that won’t feel like a video game, or something distant, but like a bodily experience of us being there. There is something so universal about the experience. We don’t just see what the Ukrainians are going through, but also what soldiers who went through fighting in the fields of the first and second world wars, and what soldiers in future wars will experience. 

Q: You say in voiceover in the film, “Time doesn’t matter here, distance does.” We see these soldiers fighting to advance sometimes just 10 meters at a time. What does zooming in on one inch-by-inch battle allow you to do as a filmmaker, as opposed to covering the war more broadly?

Chernov: While we were making 20 Days in Mariupol, we learned that speaking about tragedy from a bird’s eye point of view never brings you real emotions. It gives you information, but does not let you experience how it really is to be in a besieged city, or how it is to be in that trench in the little forest that was once a place where you played as a child. I think for morally, physically, and cinematically complex stories like war films, it is absolutely necessary to make sure that your story is, at the same time, very simple. The entire complexity of war can be distilled into a symbol of a fight for that little forest, that one or two kilometers of land that for these guys is home, and for me too. When your heart is in that land, when that’s the land of your memories and your childhood, you will fight for every inch of it. It’s fighting for your existence.

Q: In describing one of the soldiers you interview, you say, “He picked up a gun, and I picked up a camera.” Why is it important to document this war, even if it means putting yourself in harm’s way?

Chernov: I’ve never considered myself a soldier. At the same time, I am incredibly grateful that there is someone who has the courage to carry a gun to defend my home. They are literally right now on the frontlines and they are the only reason my hometown is not occupied. It’s that simple. Being part of this community, feeling the urge to tell their story and to make sure that their sacrifices and their courage is seen and acknowledged, it’s just right. It’s just what I feel I need to do not just as a journalist or a documentary filmmaker who tries to save this moment in history, but for me as part of the community. Seeing their families coming in the cinema and watching this film with hundreds of people in the audience that appreciate the sacrifice of their loved ones is the main reason why I never doubt that this is worth the risk. They feel it was not in vain. This is the way for me to carry my flag for them. But a camera is not a gun. And there is a frustration there too, because you can change very little. Even when this is over – and this war will be over as all wars are sooner or later – a new one will start, and this war will be a memory. We live in an age when information is constantly deformed and transformed into narratives. What I want to make sure is that when the guns are silent, the battle for truth and memory will start. 

Q: There are a lot of quieter moments in this film. There’s a conversation with the soldier about rival universities. There’s another soldier who talks about wanting to quit cigarettes while worrying about his wife at home. There’s one moment where a few of the men rescue a cat from the village. Why is it important to include these more personal moments with the soldiers?

Chernov: They are the main moments of the film. Not the battlefields scenes, not a flag raised over the village. Those moments are the most important ones because they show us that behind the uniform, this war is for human survival.  It’s the survival of those families they talk about. It’s for the survival of the humanity in us. I want the audience to see past all the headlines and past all the politics and geopolitics. All the big words going around the world about reasons and consequences and concessions and political capital – I want it to be boiled down to a human face, a real life of a person who made their choice to defend their families. And if I can get through all those layers, my job is done. If that humanity comes through, if I manage to show not a soldier, but a student, not a soldier, but a truck driver, then I did it right.