In 2023, Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Alex Babenko accompanied the Ukranian 3rd Assault Brigade in their counteroffensive mission to reclaim the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. To do so, the brigade had to hazard a slow and grueling advance through a mile (i.e., 2000 meters) of a heavily-fortified forest flanked on both sides by mined fields. The stated goal was to liberate Andriivka and plant the Ukranian flag as testament to victory.
But as Hemingway’s quote suggests above, the liberation consists of names only and the flags raised to proclaim liberation ruffle over sites that have been demolished by bombs and turned into graveyards of smoking ruins and abandoned corpses. After negotiating the 2000 meters to Andriivka, and losing members of the Brigade along the way—some critically wounded, some dead—the Brigade discovers that the village of Andriivka has been razed to the ground. Bombed-out structures are no longer homes that hold memories. So where to raise a flag? The village has been destroyed, all its former inhabitants have been displaced, save for a cat that the Brigade adopts and names Andriivka. The large dimension of small actions is encapsulated in saving this cat and—though it seems that all the effort to reclaim Andriivka, the lives lost, doesn’t seem to justify the initiative of the counteroffensive, for these young men defending their Ukranian homeland, hope demands dreams for the future, albeit imagined, of a village reconstructed, and a peaceful way of life restored. It’s a sad and sobering afternote that Andriivkka and most of the land reclaimed during the 2023 counteroffensive on display in this documentary eventually succumbed to Russian occupation again. By January 2025, Russia would come to control more than 20% of Ukraine, and young Ukranian soldiers were forced to contemplate the possibility that their lives would end in war.
2000 Meters to Andriivka was produced and presented by Deri McCrudden of the Associated Press and Raney Aronson-Rath of Frontline PBS, and in solidarity with journalism and public broadcasting under attack by Donald Trump in his continuing effort to convert our democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship, I steeled myself to watch this harrowing and immersive chronicle where the attack against the journalistic record is literal, physical, as in the first scene where Piro, the cameraman recording events, is seriously injured. It’s quite remarkable that all the film’s battle scenes were recorded by members of the 3rd Assault Brigade who felt it important to chronicle their reclamation of Andriivka.
Chernov’s contribution includes editorial voiceover and intimate interviews with individual members of the Brigade. As he gets to know them, we get to know them, and then we feel what he feels when he relays that the soldiers he has interviewed are injured in subsequent counteroffensives five months down the line, succumb to their injuries, and die in hospitals. Such a waste of the lives of young men barely in their twenties.
Sam Slater’s low, droning and mournful soundtrack accompanies drone footage high overhead capturing the destruction and carnage; bodies on the battlefield. Ukranian bodies, if found, are recovered and removed. Russian bodies left to rot.
2000 Meters to Andriivka premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Directing Award for World Cinema Documentary. It opens at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley, California on August 1 with Special Q&A Screenings:
August 2 at The Roxie Theater, San Francisco Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov after 5:45 PM screening
August 3 at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov after 2:45PM screening
August 3 at the Smith Rafael Film Center, San Rafael Q&A with Mstyslav Chernov after 4:30 PM
screening
