2024-03-11 17:09:59
It’s like you’re looking straight into hell, one of the viewers commented on Facebook about the film 20 days in Mariupol. It is a terrible movie, full of pain, fear and suffering. Ninety minutes of horror and anger towards those who ordered the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Trailer for the movie 20 days in Mariupol | Video: Frontline PBS | Official/Youtube.com
The film 20 days in Mariupol won the Oscar for the best documentary on Monday night. He also won the British Film Academy’s BAFTA Television Award in February. The documentary is part of the film festival about human rights One World, which starts in the Czech Republic on March 20.
Let’s start with the worst. The film 20 days in Mariupol shows close-up Russian fire on residential buildings and hospitals. And children die in it. Very small, toddlers and preschoolers. At the end of the film, one of the doctors pulls up the blanket from the small motionless body. She is one of the youngest victims of the Russian shelling of the city, who lived only a few days.
When the doctors and nurses come to tell the mother that they couldn’t save the baby, they stand around her in silence as the devastated woman cries loudly and screams over and over, “Why?! Why?! Why?!” At that moment, more than one viewer will probably want to stop the film and walk away from it, but there are more such moments in the film.
It is actually an evidence-based indictment of Russia for war crimes and barbarism against the Ukrainian population. The people in the film have nowhere to go, the roofs of their houses are on fire and they have to watch as the Russian bombing turns their city into a burnt wasteland. At the same time, Russian state television claims that the footage from Mariupol was filmed in a studio and that the dead and injured are actually actors.
The main author of the film is Ukrainian Associated Press reporter Mstyslav Chernov. He and his team arrived in Mariupol on the coast of the Sea of Azov a few hours before the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. “Wars don’t start with explosions and sirens, but with silence,” Chernov says in the film as he drives through the city, which is expecting an attack at any moment.
The fears came true and the Russians threw a huge force towards Mariupol from the first minutes. Černov and his colleagues document the rising tension day after day due to fears that the enemy is approaching and gradually sealing off Mariupol. First, explosions and smoke are seen from a distance, then the moment comes when the first Russian tank appears.
Director of the film 20 days in Mariupol Mstyslav Černov | Photo: Reuters
“I’m in front of hospital number two and I see a tank with the letter Z from the window. I can see it with my own eyes, they are here,” says a security guard standing by the window in the documentary. Calls from the occupiers to lay down their arms are heard on radios and radio receivers. Mariupol is still defending, some soldiers remain, but it’s just delaying what must come. Evil wins, advances, and grips all who remain ever tighter. Apartment buildings are burning all over the city and people are hiding in basements. The survivors.
Journalists also document looted grocery stores, forcibly opened ATMs, or a fight in a sporting goods store. “What are you taking that ball for?! Now you’re going to play with a ball?! What are you stealing and trespassing on?!” screams a desperate saleswoman as soldiers encourage the looting crowd to disperse. To the sound of very close Russian fire.
It is a war documentary, so 20 days in Mariupol obviously does not have a happy ending. The journalists eventually get out of town with a Red Cross convoy, while doctors, soldiers, police and many wounded people are surrounded by Russian tanks in the hospital. To this day, we do not know how many people actually perished in Mariupol. How many were buried in parks and yards and how many were buried in mass graves by the occupiers after their arrival. Mariupol was unfortunately followed by other cities that were captured by the Russian army. They are destroyed, without people. Severodonec, Soledar, Bakhmut, Avdijivka.
“This is the first Oscar in the history of Ukraine, I am honored,” Chernov said in his acceptance speech on Monday in Los Angeles. “I’ll probably be the first director on this stage to say, ‘I wish I’d never made this movie, I wish I could trade it for Russia never attacking Ukraine,'” he said.