Seeing Ukraine’s War Through Fresh Eyes: Oscar Winner’s New Doc at Sundance

A film that puts you right into the heart of Ukraine’s battlefields. Oscar-winning filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov is back with another powerful documentary. This time, he’s teaming up with PBS’s “Frontline” to bring us “2000 Meters to Andriivka. ” The film, produced jointly with the Associated Press, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It focuses on a Ukrainian platoon’s dangerous mission to rescue a strategic village. Chernov is no stranger to capturing the raw reality of war. His previous documentary, “20 Days in Mariupol, ” proved to be a game-changer. It not only won the best documentary Oscar but also collected several other prestigious awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize for public service. The film showed the world the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine conflict through AP’s reporting. “2000 Meters to Andriivka” takes us deeper into the war zone. It shows a platoon trying to cover “one mile of heavily fortified forest. ” As they fight their way through their devastated homeland, they face a chilling realization: the war might never end. The Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 23 to February 2 in Park City, Utah, seems like the perfect place for this documentary. Kim Yutani, the festival’s director of programming, says the film will deeply move audiences. She describes it as “an incredible documentary” that takes viewers “into the trenches with Ukrainian troops. ” Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the conflict has become one of the deadliest in Europe since World War II. Both sides have suffered heavy losses.