“20 Days in Mariupol” became the first Ukrainian film to win an Oscar. A documentary work that deals with the Russian invasion and the atrocities of the war . Mstyslav Chernov, the director, talks about why he wishes he had never made this film.
Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” a harrowing first-person account of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, won the Oscar for best documentary feature on Sunday, March 10th.
The joint production of The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” earned awards for Chernov, producer and editor Michelle Mizner and producer Raney Aronson-Rath. It is the first Oscar and nomination for Chernov, an AP video journalist, as well as for the 178-year-old news agency. It is the third nomination and first win for “Frontline.”
Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko arrived an hour before Russia began bombing the port city. Two weeks later, they were the last journalists working for an international media in the city, sending crucial dispatches to the outside world showing civilian casualties of all ages, the digging of mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital and the magnitude of the devastation.
In the film Chernov is faced with different reactions. Some thanked the journalists for doing their job, others called them prostitutes. Some doctors urged them to film graphic scenes of injured and dead children to show the world the reality they faced.
Only about 40 minutes of video reached the world in real time due to the lack of internet and electricity, but when Chernov and his colleagues were finally able to leave the city, they decided they needed to do something with the 30 hours of footage they had recorded. Chernov, who was born in Ukraine, is also the narrator the documentary.
The work of Chernov, Maloletka, Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for public service and was highly placed that same year in a Pulitzer for breaking news photography.
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