Director of '20 Days in Mariupol' tells NV about chaos, pain and amazing kindness of people in besieged city

Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov’s documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” has received a nomination for the 2024 Oscars in the Best Documentary Feature Film category.

The film depicts the brutal siege of Mariupol by Russian forces in February and March 2022.

Read also: Ukrainian documentary 20 Days in Mariupol nominated for 2024 BAFTA Awards in two categories

As an Associated Press video operator, Chernov and his colleagues came to the city on the border with occupied Donetsk Oblast mere hours before the Russian full-scale invasion. The crew spent a total of 20 days in the besieged city, capturing the horrors of the invasion, from tanks shelling houses to the killing of civilians, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and mass graves.

Chernov decided that, if he survived, he would make a film to show the world "the true face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Despite being hunted by Russian troops, Chernov and his team managed to leave the city through a green corridor, taking all the footage with them.

Read also: Mariupol documentary director on his experience in besieged city — interview

The film premiered internationally at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, winning the Audience Award. Its Ukrainian premiere occurred at the Docudays UA festival in Kyiv, followed by a release in Ukrainian cinemas in August 2023, where it became the highest-grossing Ukrainian documentary film of all time in its opening weekend.

"20 Days in Mariupol" also received two BAFTA nominations for Best Documentary Feature Film and Best Film Not in the English Language. Chernov himself earned a nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in Documentary.

The nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards were announced in Los Angeles on Twitter (X) on Jan. 23, with the Ukrainian documentary film "20 Days in Mariupol" among them. Chernov told NV the incredible story behind it, how he filmed under fire, miraculously survived, and fled in a car riddled with shrapnel.

“The decision to stay in Mariupol even under siege was made before the full-scale invasion,” Chernov told NV.

“We decided to go there on Feb. 23 because we knew that, in any case - whether Russia attacks Ukraine from all sides or there is a new wave of escalation in Donbass - Mariupol will be attacked. It was so close to the front line, and Russia had concentrated so many forces on the borders and in the occupied territories, that we realized that it would most likely be surrounded.”

Despite his desire to be in the city in case of an attack, however, there was initially no plant to make a documentary movie.

“My job is news,” says Chernov.

“When I realized that there were no international journalists left in the city and we were the only ones who could film something and show it to the world, I realized that every shot would be important.”

He added that this decision was only strengthened when he witnessed how many war crimes were being committed by Russia in the city on a daily basis.

Consequently, the director says, “I stopped shooting news and started shooting every minute. I realized that if we were lucky enough to get out of there, we would have to do something more.”

Read also: Ukrainian photographer Maloletka wins prestigious award for Siege of Mariupol photos

Living conditions in Mariupol were difficult from the very beginning, with Chernov and his team surviving the same conditions as everyone else in the city. They cooked with fire and melted snow for water. They charged the batteries for their equipment with generators at a hospital, where the operating room was constantly working, sleeping on the floor next to patients.

When the hospital was surrounded, we miraculously escaped. The police helped us. One of them was Volodymyr, a policeman who risked his family to save us and get us out of the city. He helped us recharge the batteries and find a place [with a connection] to send [materials to the newsroom].

After 20 days in the city, people started to break through checkpoints and attempted to flee via an unofficial “green corridor.”

By that time, according to Chernov, “part of the city was already occupied and the front line was moving into the city itself. The occupied part of the city was shelled less, because when the Russian army advances, it simply destroys every neighborhood it enters, and… the Ukrainian military tries not to shoot at civilians.”

This meant that people living in occupied parts of Mariupol were able to begin evacuation.

Despite their car being “completely smashed” and “full of shrapnel,” Russian soldiers only peered through the vehicle’s broken windows and did not notice their carefully hidden equipment.

“We went through 15 checkpoints. But precisely because it was the first days of the people's departure and there was chaos, there were no strict controls - they were not yet taking all the men out of their cars and they did not check people’s phones,” the director says.

Unsurprisingly, “breaking through the front line was the hardest thing. You can get through the checkpoints, but what are you going to do at the front where there is a battle?”

Ultimately, the team’s escape came down to planning, no small amount of luck, and help from other people.

“It was not the ‘what’ that helped, but the ‘who,’” says Chernov.

“When we were surrounded in the hospital, we were rescued by a group of Special Forces. I am very grateful to those guys. Some of them, unfortunately, were killed in Azovstal, some were captured, and now they are back and fighting on the front line.”

At one point in “20 Days in Mariupol,” Chernov quotes a doctor who says that war is like an X-ray – “it shows everything that is inside a person. Good people get better and bad people show their worst.”

The director expanded on this during his talk with NV, saying “we always see people supporting each other - people we don't even know, just those who are around: neighbors, patients, police officers, firefighters, doctors, ordinary people, volunteers. And the deeper the crisis, the more the city dies, the more that support gets stronger.”

Read also: '20 Days in Mariupol' documentary to be released soon

He describes “ordinary people who took full responsibility for organizing and helping thousands of people who were hiding in large bomb shelters like the Drama Theater, the large Terrasport gym, and several others. These were ordinary people who helped everyone who came, got water, cleaned the sewers, looked for food, took them to the hospital. It's fantastic. I've never seen anything like it.

And despite his documentary work, Chernov and his team didn’t hesitate to help people when necessary.

“There is a simple rule for journalists working in [conflict] zones: if you see someone competent who can help a person who is suffering or injured, you keep filming,” he says.

“If there is no such person, you put the camera down and help. There were times when we helped doctors carry the wounded, or delivered food around the hospital - small things that everyone did.”

Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine is not Chernov’s first war. Nor, he adds, is it the first war he’s covered bearing Russia’s fingerprints.

“I've been filming wars for nine years now, and over the years I've seen that they're all connected in one way or another, and there's always Russia somewhere, whether it's Syria, where Russia is also destroying cities with its bombs, or Chechen fighters who have joined ISIS in Iraq, or "peacekeepers" (actually Russian special forces) in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he says.

“There is a Russian footprint everywhere. Still, the war in Ukraine remains the most difficult for me. My career as an international and military journalist started in 2014. And I'll tell you the truth: it was never worse than in Mariupol - such chaotic bombing, such concentrated pain and danger.”

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine