2000 Meters to Andriivka

Autumn 2023, and Ukraine's counteroffensive has stalled. A battalion has to advance a mile through a forest to retake Andriivka, a small occupied village. The path is narrow, mined, and there is a danger behind every tree. The documentary is built from the soldiers' chest cameras and the journalist's own footage. It does not hide who dies, who is wounded, or why the advance cannot continue. The same footage is later used as evidence against Russia's denial of the occupation. Mstyslav Chernov directs; his previous documentary about the siege of Mariupol won an Oscar in 2024. It is a Ukrainian and American co-production. The documentary had its world premiere in the world cinema documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival on 23 January 2025. Most of the footage comes from the chest cameras of Ukrainian soldiers and from filming by Chernov's colleague Alex Babenko. The matter it treats is the cost of a distance; two thousand metres is short on paper, but the real advance takes days. The film introduces the soldiers by name and does not leave the deaths as statistics. The narrative also shows the ordinariness of war day to day; waiting, exhaustion and boredom are as frequent as death. Chernov enters the narrative in his own voice at times and explains his journalistic decisions. The ending closes with the village taken but gives no sense of victory. Its limit is weight; the footage is real, the scenes very hard, and it is difficult to watch. Who it is for: viewers of war journalism and real event documentary. Who it is not for: it is very harsh, contains real footage of death, and the ending bitter.