20 Days in Mariupol Is Must See Journalism. Not certain as to why it’s taken me until 2024 to get my hands on a copy of this incredible, heartbreaking, and brilliant documentary. 20 Days in Mariupol was nominated for two BAFTAs and won one of them. It also won a Directors Guild of America Award. Additionally, 20 Days in Mariupol screened at Sundance in 2023 where it won the World Cinema Documentary Competition. It then went on to be the Ukrainian submission for the Best International Feature Film, but instead, was nominated for overall Best International Feature Film – where it won its category. (I mean, did any other movie stand a chance last year? Personally I think all other nominations should have withdrawn out of general respect for the topic. But maybe that’s just me.)
Well, regardless, the film 20 Days in Mariupol is now available for general viewing, and is available over on PBS I believe. So, please, go and stream this soul rending film in order to give these documentarians the enormous love that they deserve.
20 Days in Mariupol tells the story of the twenty days that Chernov spent with his AP Press reporter colleagues in the besieged city of Mariupol from February to March of 2022. It was the first few weeks of the horrible invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Chernov worked alongside the team from PBS’s Frontline and the Associated Press in order to compile the footage into a full length documentary. Many of the shots captured in this film became critical information to show the world the atrocities that Russia was committing there in Mariupol.
You will no doubt recognize many of the terrible images as they were splashed across newspapers and online news outlets around the world at the time. And there was an understanding, even while Chernov was working, that what he was doing was critical work in documenting these atrocities. Throughout the film, numerous times, people realized the opportunity that he presented them to tell of the terror, and the evil, Russia was unleashing on the world. At one point, a policeman, tells of the deaths of civilians he has just witnessed. At another, a doctor begs Chernov to capture the dead child Russia has ruthlessly slaughtered, and the teen cut down in the prime of his life. The people realized the importance of what it was that Chernov was doing by putting his own life at risk in order to tell this story.
But here’s why this particular story is so important for everyone to see. There is a difference between two country’s armies fighting over their border limits… and boundary lines. Killing men enlisted to protect a sovereign state. And then there is this… what Russia is doing to Ukraine (hell, Syria too, for that matter, while we are at it.) is the stuff of global war crimes. Gallows should be erected. And high profile members of the Russian government should utilize said gallows. What Russia has been doing, and continues to do in Ukraine is pure evil. And the fact that NATO is sitting out because of a technicality is cowardice in my opinion. Sure, we should mete out justice similarly elsewhere, and we should be more concerned about lives (any lives) than oil, geopolitical control, etc., etc. (So, yes, the provisos and the details here just got complicated with regard to our not treating Ukraine differently than the rest of the world.)
The film is so important, it was considered seminal to Ukraine’s information warfare, it was dismissed as propaganda by Russia, and it will break your heart to see, first hand, just how soulless Russia is being in their attempted hostile takeover of the Ukraine.
Edited by: CY (Slava Ukraini)