Mariupol documentary spirals into darkness
PARK CITY, Utah — A near-apocalyptic diary of life under siege, “20 Days in Mariupol” finds filmmaker and Associated Press videographer Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, confronting the horror of war and chronicling it.
At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine early last year, the Kharkiv native, a veteran of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, set out to create a record of the attack on his homeland, only to find himself drawn into what he described to The Times as “the swift spiraling into the darkness” of the surrounded city on the Sea of Azov, first through Russia’s indiscriminate bombings, then the collapse of the electricity grid and healthcare system, and finally looting, exodus and (ongoing) occupation. The result, at once haunting and riveting, is populated with panicked women, crying children, griefstricken men, frustrated doctors and rueful journalists, all endeavoring to maintain their humanity, and to save others’, in the face of incalculable loss — all framed by Chernov’s poetically matterof-fact narration and excerpts from the cable news programs on which his damning footage appeared.
I sat down with Chernov on Sunday in the L.A. Times Studio at Sundance to discuss the film, which screens Wednesday and Thursday at the festival. A production of Frontline and the Associated Press, the film is planning a theatrical release and, one hopes, an Oscar campaign; no television air date has been set. Chernov wore a simple black jacket with a press badge sewn on the left arm, as if to underscore his voice-over in the film: “This is a historical war,” he indelibly concludes. “To not document it is impossible.”
Your voice-over narration adds a layer of self-reflection different from the kinds of journalistic dispatches we’re used to.
It goes far, far beyond Mariupol. I’ve been doing news for nine years already. I’m a conflict journalist and my main job for AP is to shoot news dispatches, and that’s what I wanted to do in Mariupol. I went there and I shot video news dispatches and I sent them when it was possible — not every day, but as often as possible. These are short-format news, quick turnaround. … It made a very strong impact on me as a human seeing all these conflicts, knowing that there was a war, an invasion of my country. And I always wanted to go deeper, to be able to ask questions, not only to tell what’s happening, but be able to question, Why? What does it mean?
The second reason why this film took this form is because, when our team broke out of Mariupol with all this 30 hours of footage, considering that only around 40 minutes was published before that, I understood that I really wanted to tell a bigger story which will show the scale and also intensity of the suffering of residents. But at the same time, I wanted the audience to see the dynamic of this fall, the swift spiraling into the darkness. I started to search for the appropriate device for that. This was not the first choice, but it seemed to be the one which would help to connect all of the pieces of the puzzle, all of the small stories.
It felt like in certain moments you were struggling with the divide between “My job here is to document, but someone right in front of me is suffering.” Were you feeling that in the moment?
Of course I felt that conflict, which is not really a conflict when you look deeper. We could drop the camera and help doctors to carry the gurney. Or when we slept in the hospital for a few days and there were not enough doctors, we would just carry food to different floors of the hospital. These are very natural things to do.
I remember a small editorial argument I used to have in Iraq when I was shooting refugees in Mosul, and I’m filming and you could see me at some point reaching my hands and helping the refugee into the truck. And I remember there was a conversation [whether] that should make it in the news report or not. I think I made this decision for myself a long time ago: Whenever I see someone needs help, and there is no one else to help them, I would just help. And if a person is getting necessary help, then I would just keep filming.
About the use of the footage as it aired on news networks in Europe and the U.S.: I read it as both a record of what images were coming out at the time, but also possibly as a concern that it didn’t have the impact in real time that you hoped.
When we were in Mariupol those 20 days, I had almost no idea, because I just had no possibility to understand the impact. I had hoped that it
would get to a wider audience and, of course, I was told by editors that it is so widely published. But whether it was having an impact on anything or not, I did not know. And I think we will not know; still there has some time to pass. … Some civilians and doctors who left after the siege was over, many of them told me that either relatives found their beloved ones because they saw them in the footage. The mayor’s office of the city, which is in exile right now, sent us a letter that because of our footage at that time we helped them to convince politicians to fight for opening up the green corridor. So I do hope that it made a difference and saved lives. However, even if it didn’t, it will still remain as a record, or as a warning. So whenever someone wants to see how the full-scale invasion started, whenever someone needs to understand what happened to Mariupol, go back in time, see the film.
Making the film, the impact is one of the discoveries. But how do you show the ripples of information and the effects on the media space around the world? So then we decided to show the raw footage, and then to show how it looks in the news. … This person came to me and said, “Now I know what happened in Mariupol and the horrors that you went through. But also, I will never watch news footage in the same way again, because it gives me a perspective what’s happening behind the camera.”
It is completely different when a scene that’s as tense as something like when the tanks arrive goes on for minutes and minutes.
I have been able to shoot maybe 1% of everything that was happening. It’s just a tiny fraction. And that is partially why I feel so guilty. All those shots I’ve seen with my eyes but did not shoot for some reason, because I did not have my camera on. The Mariupol Drama Theater bombing happened the day after we left. We’d been to that shelter. We knew hundreds of people were there. So we knew immediately if that shelter got bombed, it’s a terrible tragedy.
Then again, when you build a film, you’re leaving scenes because they don’t fit into the arc. They just distract. There is this scene which I really wanted to be there in another hospital where there were people without kidneys on dialysis and the hospital was running on generators. And the chief of the ward told me, “I don’t know what we’re going to do. There are 20 people here. And the generator is running out of fuel. As soon as this shuts down in two days, all of these people are going to be dead. And they were. I couldn’t fit all the children who have died, but also because it would be too heavy and probably would push the audience away.
Was that conscious when you were in the edit?
All I needed to do was edit to convey what was really happening. That is the challenge, because when you lay out everything that was filmed, you suddenly feel that the real tension is lost. It’s like there’s a huge explosion near you, but your microphone can record only certain frequencies of it. Same as images. … If I was shooting this now, I would shoot it differently. I would shoot more.
Is there a next story you want to report?
Making the film has impacted how I now film and send news packages. My shots became longer and I stick to people for longer and my questions are different now. My questions are more about feelings than about events. This film has changed me as a news reporter. Of course there are so many stories. I really want to do more about Mariupol. I wish I could come back someday and do a second film. … Right now I will come back to news gathering. I will come back to my daily job sending news dispatches from the front lines.