Realism without filters, Chernov’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a devastating war vérité that strips conflict of rhetoric, leaving only attrition, absurdity, and the unbearable weight of patriotic labour carried by ordinary Ukrainian men.
Review #3,059
Dir. Mstyslav Chernov
2025 | Ukraine | Documentary, War | 107min | 1.85:1 | Ukrainian, English & Russian
Not rated – likely to be M18 for disturbing scenes and coarse language
Cast: –
Plot: Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
Awards: Won Directing Award – World Cinema Documentary (Sundance)
International Sales: Dogwoof
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Russia-Ukraine War; Loss & Destruction
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
A follow-up to the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol (2023), which detailed the experiences of journalists trapped in the bombarded city as they attempted to document the human toll of the Russian invasion, 2,000 Meters to Andriivka sees director Mstyslav Chernov follow a platoon of Ukrainian soldiers as they attempt to cross a heavily fortified stretch of forest to liberate a nearby village for strategic purposes.
As the title suggests, it is just two kilometres, but for these brave soldiers, it feels a hundred times longer—arduous, uncertain, and existentially fraught. We learn that this mission was part of the ‘failed’ Ukrainian counteroffensive often referenced in mainstream news, as the army tried to reclaim territory from occupying Russian forces.
Chernov asks: to what end, really, when Russia can simply send another million men if it so chooses? It becomes painfully clear that Putin is waging a devilish war of attrition, while Zelensky ‘daredevilishly’ insists on fighting to the last man. Yet whether devil or daredevil, all counts for nothing when one is alone with a handful of comrades, rifle in hand, facing incoming fire.
Chernov’s film takes us there—into the battleground—with an immediacy so acute it becomes more than unsettling. Some viewers may be familiar with war films staged with minimalist realism, such as the recent Warfare (2025), but 2,000 Meters to Andriivka has the potential to redefine what a war film can be, even as it operates firmly in the realm of non-fiction with a capital N.
“What if the war lasts until the end of our lives?”
I would argue it is more than a documentary; it is realism without filters, a kind of war vérité that records the brutal labour of patriotism, as the survival of a country rests on the shoulders of these men—and hundreds of thousands more, unseen, dead or alive.
Chernov also exposes the cruel irony of warfare as experienced on the ground. In one telling scene, a captured Russian soldier is asked why he is here; his reply: “I have no idea.” Similar questions were once posed to American soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq, with classically hollow answers.
While the film’s images and sounds are as potent as they are terrifying, 2,000 Meters to Andriivka also benefits from Chernov’s steady, calming narration, which situates this single battle within the wider war and articulates its emotional cost, most devastatingly in two sequences that takes us out of ground zero, including one at the very end that I will not spoil, and just as well, as I cannot find the words to describe.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 