“Each film If war stops being pro-war, ” François Truffaut Once in an interview from 1973 with Gene Siskel in the Chicago Tribune.
In a way he is still right about it even when considering MSTYSlav ChernovS “2000 meters to Andriivka“One of the most visceral, experience depictions of battle ever captured in a documentary. The Ukrainian director, as Won the best documentary feature Oscar for his former ”20 Depours Allebeal Stead;“Is clearly glorifying his country’s righteous struggle against the Russian invaders, and in the practical sense this is not an anti -war film. At an existential level, however, “2000 meters to Andriivka” is definitely an anti -war film, one that shows the stunning meaningless battle that nothing else that the viewers may ever have seen.
Chernov, an Associated Press -War correspondent in various theaters of battle around the world before the war came to his native Ukraine, is extremely skilled at capturing this shade: the war we see the Ukrainian soldiers is incredible and in many ways meaningless, in a way Who probably has not seen since the World War I War. And yet unlike the First World War, this is a war that must absolutely be fought.
He together edited “2000 meters to Andriivka” largely from body camera films taken by actual Ukrainian soldiers in battle. It is scrubbing to look at, such as frenicism of racing heartbeat and darting eyeball-it is beyond motion-inducing jerk in a handheld camera because these images are not even handheld. But you see what the soldiers see, and, as the second latest film, which largely built around the first personal camera perspective, “Nickel Boys”, it gives an even greater subjective identification to the person through whose eyes you see.
The film’s backbone is formed by a particular goal: we look at the soldiers in Ukraine’s third attack brigade who try to regain the small town of Andriivka, which is seen as a crucial road for the possible recess of Donetsk City Bakhmut, which fell to the Russians near the beginning of the war 2022. The events. The events. As caught here is 2023 when Ukraine tried its famous stopped counter -offensive. To take Andriivka, they must approach the village via a thin strip of a Brambly forest that goes for 2,000 meters in a straight line to the city. It will give them coverage, although it also hides many fox holes where the Russians are rooted. Clearing out the forest means that it is a war war, with the Ukrainians who usually have to crawl to stay out of enemy’s view. Covering these 2,000 meters takes days at the end.
Chernov focuses especially on several soldiers and often punctures his own conversation directly to the camera with their own haunting voiceover and says they died a few months later. We see a soldier lying dead in the middle of a fire fight, his comrade crawls up to him to make sure – and Chernov filmed the funeral in the soldier’s hometown some time later, the whole community turned to pay its respect for a fallen hero.
What is striking with each of the fire battles we witness at different stages of the 2,000 meter hike is how much they are: an AK-47 stands out from the bottom of the frame (the worst you can say about relying On the first person’s POV of the Body Camera pictures is that it often feels like a first person-shooting view game) that shoots towards goal barely even a glimpse, in the middle of a tangle of twisted branches. It is scrubbing and repetitive to judge. This is a case of film that really does not make war exciting, but stultification in its tedium. And yet it still has to be fought. These fighters hold the line against the Russians in eastern Ukraine so that the invaders do not overwhelm the entire country and then threaten NATO.
But can they survive long enough to surpass the Russian attack? When they finally take Andriivka, it is as much of a pyrical victory as everything you can imagine, with a cat that the soldiers save as the only living thing that still exists, and the buildings that are so destroyed from the bombardmen that there is not even a Suitable place to lift the Ukrainian flag. How can such an empty victory lead to Ukraine’s continued survival? (And of course there is an even more gloomy epilogue record about the city’s ultimate fate.)
“2000 meters to Andriivka” is an astonishing watch that cannot possibly capture the entire extent of the traumatic day to drive this war. But even catching a piece of it is a triumph of empathic identification. And a punishment for those who do not think this struggle is worth fighting. Can a movie be pro-war and anti-war at the same time? This one is.
Rating: B+
“2000 meters to Andriivka” world premiered at 2025 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. It is a production of PBS’s “Frontline” and AP and is looking for theater distribution.
