'Masterful': Tom Mutch reviews '2000 Meters to Andriivka'
Andriivka, August 2023: Ukrainian servicemen from 3rd Assault Brigade fire a machine gun towards Russian positions | Image by: AP Photo
3 min read
A brutal and electric documentary following one of Ukraine’s most elite brigades as it attempts to liberate a strategically important village from the Russians, Mstyslav Chernov’s film is breathtaking and unmissable
We see the silhouette of a soldier at dusk, then a lightning bolt smash into the broken ground behind him. A flash of orange flame spurts from the explosion site of a mortar. The endless stumps of trees around are stripped of anything resembling branches or foliage, while desperate soldiers yell updates and swear around us.
The opening scene of Mstyslav Chernov’s breathtaking film is worthy of the best Hollywood cinematographer, but is entirely real, taken from bodycam footage of a soldier in Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade.
Too many war films are called ‘unflinching’ when their eyes are barely squinting open. Not so here. From the first frames, we are thrown straight into the horrors of 21st-century industrial warfare. The ragdoll of a Russian corpse flying from a drone impact. The broken limbs of a Ukrainian soldier hit by a mortar. The execution of a Russian who pretends to surrender, then throws a grenade in his captor’s face.
Ukrainian platoon involved in military operation to retake the town of Andriivka from Russian forces | Image by: Alamy / Everett Collection Inc
The film follows one of Ukraine’s most elite brigades as they attempt to liberate the village of Andriivka. The only way through Russian minefields is a 2,000-metre stretch of forest, which a soldier describes as “landing on a planet where everything is trying to kill you”. From here what should be a two-minute drive, or 10-minute run, takes the Ukrainians three months of the most vicious combat to reach the houses – by then ruined husks.
Occasionally, a flash from our familiar world intrudes on the carnage. One commander’s pink vape, contrasted with his muddy combat gear. The ’Patagonia’ patch on a discarded flak jacket on the forest floor. A tiny cat, fur singed and ruffled, that the men find in the ruins of Andriivka, the only sign of life.
Chernov’s breathtaking film is worthy of the best Hollywood cinematographer, but is entirely real
The film’s electric and brutal combat footage alone would make it unmissable. But what elevates it is Chernov’s supreme command of pacing and contrast. One masterful scene cuts from the heat of a battlefield where a young soldier, Gagarin, bleeds to death, to his funeral in a small town in western Ukraine. It is the 76th such funeral, a villager tells us, and they wonder who of their young people will be left after the war is over. This brief respite from the battlefields shows us the ripple effects on wider society of just one dead soldier, before we are thrust right back into the action.
One scene hit me like a like a gut punch. I was there on the day Andriivka was liberated, embedded with a medical unit of 3rd Assault Brigade waiting to patch up injured soldiers. At one point, soldiers streamed off and out of an armored vehicle to a meeting point just behind the frontlines.
But what I remember from that day are the smiles and cheering of the men, even those bleeding and with broken bones. They’d won this battle and finally, it seemed, the Ukrainians were on their way to winning the war. But it was all just a mirage.
Tom Mutch is a Ukrainian-based journalist and author of The Dogs of Mariupol, a new history of Russia’s full-scale invasion, published by Biteback
2000 Meters to Andriivka
Directed and produced by: Mstyslav Chernov
Venue: General cinema release
