Sundance Festival releases excerpts from Mstyslav Chernov’s new film
Pravda Ukraine
The independent American film festival Sundance has posted a video presentation of Mstyslav Chernov’s new film 2000 Metres to Andriivka on its official YouTube channel.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia
Quote from Mstyslav Chernov: “This is the story of Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting for every inch of their land. This is the story of a little forest and the village of Andriivka that are just two hours from my hometown. This is the story of modern war – of how it’s fought, how it’s experienced, and how it’s changing us.”
Details: The documentary is set during the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023. The journalists follow soldiers from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade as they gradually make their way through a forest to liberate the captured village of Andriivka, near Bakhmut.
Chernov, along with teams from Frontline and Associated Press, worked on the project for about 18 months. In addition to Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Oleksandr Babenko, producers Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath also collaborated on the project. Sam Slater (Chernobyl, Joker) composed the score. The film’s world premiere will be held at Sundance on 23 January.
Quote from Kim Yutani, Director of Programming at Sundance Film Festival: “It’s an incredible documentary. It really takes you into the trenches, literally into the trenches with Ukrainian troops, Ukrainian soldiers, citizens who became soldiers — a beautiful, horrifying portrait of the futility of war. Chernov creates an unrivalled film about the horrific beauty of liberating your own home.”
Ukrainian cinema at the Sundance Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is considered the main independent film festival in the United States and one of the most influential in the world. It takes place annually, and in 2025 will be held from 23 January to 2 February in Park City, Utah.
It is organised by the Sundance Institute, founded in 1981 by American actor and director Robert Redford to promote a new, independent vision in American cinema.
Porcelain War, a documentary about the war in Ukraine, won a Grand Jury Prize at the film festival in 2024. The film, directed by Brendan Bellomo (USA) and former soldier Slava Leontiev (Ukraine), was awarded the US Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. Shortly before the new year, the film was shortlisted for the 2025 Oscars.
In 2023, Chernov’s first film, 20 Days in Mariupol, won the Audience Award in the festival’s World Cinema Documentary category. A few days later the film, which portrays the early days of the Russian army’s attack on Mariupol in February and March 2022, was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards in the Documentary category.
20 Days in Mariupol later won Ukraine’s first Oscar.
Besides Chernov’s film, another documentary about the war in Ukraine was screened at Sundance 2023 – Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies.
The first Ukrainian feature film to be entered in the Sundance competition was Klondike, a drama by Maryna Er Gorbach, in 2022. It tells the story of a family caught up in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane crash on 17 July 2014 in the village of Hrabove, Donetsk Oblast.
That year the festival also hosted the world premiere of A House Made of Splinters, a documentary about children in an orphanage in Lysychansk directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont.
In 2020, Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk won a Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival Award for her documentary The Earth Is Blue as an Orange.
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