From the Academy Award–winning director of 20 Days in Mariupol comes an immersive and harrowing look at the mission of one Ukrainian platoon. Mstyslav Chernov’s commitment to documenting the devastation of his homeland and the gruelling efforts of Ukrainian forces to win back their territories is of the highest order; after the premiere of 2000 Meters to Andriivka, he left the Sundance Film Festival with the Directing Award for World Cinema Documentary in hand.
Despite the extremely high risk, Chernov joins soldiers on the front line in eastern Ukraine as they inch forward through a narrow strip of charred forest flanked by minefields in an effort to liberate the strategic village of Andriivka.
Interlacing first-person footage taken using body cameras with intimate interviews with soldiers—many of them barely past the threshold of adulthood—2000 Meters witnesses the toll this David and Goliath fight is taking on Ukraine. The farther the soldiers and filmmakers move through the destroyed landscape of their homeland, the more they realize this war is nowhere near its end. A dire and powerful look at the realities and futility of war, and what it means to fight for one’s nation’s freedom and preserve its memory. Kinga Binkowska, Hot Docs
Content Warning: Extreme immersive war scenes.
