2000 Meters to Andriivka

2000 Meters to Andriivka is the second feature film from the Oscar-winning team behind 20 Days in Mariupol — Ukrainian filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov.

Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol offered audiences a visceral view of the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its civilian toll. Now, in 2000 Meters to Andriivika, Chernov turns his lens towards Ukrainian soldiers — who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of land.

Amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, Chernov and his AP colleague Alex Babenko follow a Ukrainian platoon traversing through one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the small, Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. But as 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.

Weaving together intensive Ukrainian Army bodycam footage and powerful moments of reflection, Chernov captures the war in his own country from a personal and devastating vantage point. 2000 Meters to Andriivka documents a battle emblematic of the broader Russian-Ukraine war — the largest military operation in Europe since World War II — and presents a view of modern warfare reminiscent of battles fought nearly a century ago.