The date is December 12, 2023, and it’s really, really bad. That’s how I would have described the documentary slate of 2023, a bunch of vanity pieces or incohesive attempts at something great. Until now. Whew, boy, until now. 20 Days in Mariupol is a perfect example of urgent contemporary filmmaking, showing how a bunch of courageous journalists can capture the full essence of something happening right now, that’s also unlike anything we’ve never seen before.
Ukranian Journalist Mstyslav Chernov takes us back to February 24, 2022, when Russia engaged in its “special military operation” in Ukraine. We spend the next 20 days there with Chernov and his colleagues in Mariupol, one of Russia’s targets, as they encircled the city and took it over. Until Chernov stopped recording.
After a chilling tease, we see “Day One” flash across the screen. And therin lies one of 20 Days’s riveting elements: seeing how a war begins. I can’t remember a time where we’ve actually seen this happen before, so watching it in real time through Chernov’s footage glues you to your seat. You see the strategic military maneuvering piece by piece: a Ukrainian missile detection system is quietly targeted. Planes then start whizzing by occasionally. On Mariupol’s outskirts, Chernov starts to hear rumblings about tanks and goes to investigate. Then you hear bombs and missiles starting to fall. Streets empty. Some flee. Hospitals start to treat shrapnel victims. And so on. The city itself starts to feel less like a community and more like a level in a video game, as people try to avoid crossfire, and search for necessary survival supplies. Once the cell phone reception goes down, that’s when everything starts to go to hell. No one knows what to do, forcing the Ukrainian military to step in to maintain some sort of order…but they’re also now more preoccupied, because Russia can now indiscriminately shell any building it wants to with way less worry about civilian causalities and war crimes they are committing getting out to the public. Watching this process happen through Chernov’s footage is the stuff of nightmares, as a once prosperous city starts to change.
Actually, not change. The city starts to die. From about day 4 on, Mariupol becomes the epitome of how war is hell. Russia destroys basic city services and institutions like fire departments, schools, or shopping centers. And as time goes on, the Russian army gets more brazen, attacking maternity wards in hospitals and giant housing complexes. A pall of fear blankets the city for the remaining survivors, who, as many Mariupol citizens point out, “get either great or worse.” Simply walking from building to building is a risk. You’re either sad or emotionally turned off, with only living the next hour or day the only thing to worry about now. Chernov sets everyone up with this drone shots of Mariupol daily, so we see from day 1 to 20 how the city slowly disintegrates into one giant corpse. And within that city corpse? Thousands of real, human ones, of all shapes and sizes, and mostly helpless people, screaming for their dead child, or lost papa, or looted home. All of these images are horrific and bleak…which is why Chernov went to such great lengths to show people (he cuts his real footage alongside it’s use in news segments) once again the depths of human ability to inflict pain on one another for political gain.
By the end, I just want to shrink into my couch and sleep, thinking about all those helpless Ukrainians trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mstyslav Chernov’s images are forever seared into my brain: his courage and the bravery of all of Mariupol’s citizens will be remembered forever, no matter how pundits try to spin this. I have one request as well: no more claims of crisis actors ok? I wanted to punch my TV watching all sorts of figures shooing away this footage claiming the movie industry was making something. With thousands of people experiencing deep unforgettable pain like this, at least give them some respect and say it was an earthquake or something. Sadness like that cannot be imitated by anyone, it has to be real. Cruelly, unfairly, real.