variety.com
14.07.2023 / 18:01
’20 Days in Mariupol’ Director Was Initially Worried the Grotesque Injustice He Captured in Ukraine Would Scare Away Audiences
Addie Morfoot Contributor On the evening of Feb. 23, 2022, a small team of AP correspondents including Mstyslav Chernov headed to Mariupol. They pulled into the Ukrainian port city at 3:30 a.m. Russia invaded Mariupol one hour later. As the only international reporters in the city, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and his team captured what later became defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, and the bombing of a maternity hospital. Chernov, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Evgeniy Maloletka initially went to Mariupol to capture what they thought would be news segments. But after escaping the city, Chernov knew that he needed to take the harrowing footage he and his team had captured and make a documentary. The result is “20 Days in Mariupol,” a 94-minute film that is both devastating and riveting. Scenes include a mother weeping over the body of her four-year-old, who died from shelling wounds, as well as a father crying that his teenage son’s legs were torn off by a bomb while playing soccer outside a school.