GBH makes history at Oscars with winning doc ‘20 Days in Mariupol’
The team behind “20 Days in Mariupol” made Oscars history Sunday night when they accepted the award for best documentary feature at the 96th annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. “This is the first Oscar in Ukrainian history,” Ukrainian journalist and director Mstyslav Chernov noted in his emotional acceptance speech.
But it’s likely there was another first, too. “Probably I will be the first director on this stage who will say I wish I had never made this film,” Chernov said. He explained that he wished he could exchange it all — for “Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities” — while acknowledging it’s impossible to change the past. Together, he urged, “we can make sure that the history record is set straight, that the truth will prevail, and that the people of Mariupol, and those who have given their lives, will never be forgotten — because cinema forms memories, and memories form history.”
Produced by the PBS series “Frontline” at GBH in Boston and the Associated Press, “20 Days in Mariupol” chronicles the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through the lens of journalists — including Chernov, a longtime video journalist for the AP — who captured footage of the city in late February and early March 2022, when he and his team were the only international journalists there.
Since then, the film has caught the attention of the world, and the Academy. On Sunday, in one of those only-in-Hollywood moments, “Barbie” co-stars Kate McKinnon and America Ferrera presented the little gold man to the GBH team, including “Frontline” editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath. “Mstyslav was sitting next to me, and we both looked at each other almost in disbelief, but we stood up and walked forward,” she said by phone Monday. “They hand you an Oscar, and of course it’s heavy — the gravity of the moment . . . it’s very substantial feeling.”
Aronson-Rath spoke to the Globe from her hotel room as Oscar stood on a table nearby. She was scheduled to board a flight back to Massachusetts, where she lives in Lexington with her husband and two teenagers. “It’s very important for me to be back at GBH and at “Frontline” with the colleagues that we made this with,” she said. “I’m coming home, and it’s going to be great to be back in Boston — the Boston support’s been incredible.”
“I haven’t really thought about, where does the Oscar live after this moment?” she added.
For now, he’s serving as a reminder not only of the importance of the story of Mariupol, but of nonfiction storytelling itself. After attending the post-Oscars Vanity Fair party and returning to her hotel, Aronson-Rath showed the statuette to her daughter, “and we just sat with it,” she said. “We talked about the importance of documentary filmmaking, and the fact that this one story was able to get out to so many people.”
None of that would have been possible without the support of public media and the Associated Press, she noted. “This is a different model, if you think about it, right? This is a model of all of us coming together to say, ‘This film and this story were important enough for us to amplify as much as we possibly could.’ We don’t have the same budgets as commercial media, but what we do have is the power of saying that we want to tell these important stories.”
One of the most gratifying moments in the film’s journey came over the summer when “20 Days in Mariupol” was in theaters at the same time as both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” she recalled. “More than not, our screenings were sold out, too: People wanted to see ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ We weren’t really in that mix in publicity terms, but we were in the theaters with them the same time, and I just thought about the importance of that . . . it was really wonderful to then have it come full circle last night.”
While Aronson-Rath and her Boston-based team are celebrating their momentous win, the mood is somewhat subdued. “If we’re somber, it’s not because we’re not feeling very proud,” she said. “It’s that we really want to make sure that people understand the gravity of what happened in Ukraine.”
GBH president and CEO Susan Goldberg echoed that sentiment in a statement, noting the Oscar win “means greater visibility for this film, keeping the attention on the people of Ukraine.”
It also means greater visibility for — and understanding of — the work that journalists do. Aronson-Rath said it’s only because of Chernov and his fellow journalists who were there in Mariupol, “boots on the ground,” that we have the record of the city that we now do.
“That was at the heart of this film,” she said. “What we can do as journalists — and journalists are under fire more and more — is be there and document what’s actually going on.”
‘We want to tell these important stories.’ RANEY ARONSON-RATH “Frontline” editor-in-chief and executive producer