Ukrainian Pulitzer Prize-winning filmmaker/journalist Mstyslav Chernov talks to Danish Oscar-nominated director Simon Lereng Wilmont (A House Made of Splinters) about Chernov’s new documentary 20 Days In Mariupol.
In the film, an AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more. The film offers a vivid, harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, as well as a window into what it’s like to report from a conflict zone, and the impact of such journalism around the globe.
Opening the conversation, Lereng Wilmont admits that it took him a while to commit to watching the “super powerful and incredibly important” film, as he felt particularly close to the subject.
“I have a very personal relationship to Mariupol. Some of my characters, my main heroes, from my earlier films were trapped in Mariupol, and we thought that they were dead actually for a long time, and we were trying desperately to figure out where they were and if we could help them. So, seeing what really happened inside the city, it was hard for me.”
He asks Chernov at what point his work was less about news reporting, but telling a wider story through the medium of documentary.
“It is a rare feeling that a photo or a video can make a difference,” Chernov replies. “There’s always a sense of frustration. And again, the sense of frustration is connected to the fact that, at least in my work, my main work is news and news dispatches, and these are very short forms, videos or texts. They can be impactful, but usually in the modern world, where things are changing all the time, when we are constantly bombarded by tragedies (and good things sometimes), we tend to just forget everything the next day. That’s just the nature of the information field that there is now. So [we had] this feeling that the story of Mariupol needs to be told in a bigger way, in a more comprehensive and longer lasting way that will tell [the] scale and a real feeling of the destruction, of a tragedy – and hope as well.”
“I think it [the idea to make a documentary] emerged together with the frustration that things [were] not changing as much as we would like them to, and that happened after the Mariupol Maternity Hospital bombing. It just became clear that this story is important not just because of the human suffering, but also symbolically it’s important for the whole world as it started changing its view on how Russia was perceived in this invasion, that they were actually killing civilians. So at that moment I thought, this story has to be told in a bigger way because it’s so connected, so important, so impactful across the world.”
Watch the whole conversation between Mstyslav Chernov and Simon Lereng Wilmont.
