20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL - Mark Reviews Movies

20 Days in Mariupol, PBS Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 20, 2023

With Ukraine still under siege and fighting back against invading Russian forces, 20 Days in Mariupol serves as a stark reminder of how sudden and unprompted the initial invasion was, as well as how brutal and inhumane it continues to be. The film, directed by local journalist Mstyslav Chernov, is full of imagery the world had come to see in print, on television, and online, but its assembly here as a chronological narrative and in-the-moment war diary makes the film a valuable account of the particular horrors of this conflict and the determination of journalists to find the truth.

Chernov, along with fellow Associated Press reporters Evgeniy Malokletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko, were in Ukraine before the Russian invasion, and upon hearing of its start on February 24, 2022, the team immediately traveled to the city of Mariupol, which would quickly become part of the front lines of the assault. At first, the attacks came by way of artillery shells, and Chernov himself, who thoughtfully narrates the documentary with personal observations about the war and his role of working within it, is quickly faced with the unthinkable.

That moment comes when Chernov and his team encounter a distraught woman, wandering the streets near her home while waiting for her son to arrive to help her. He can only offer one piece of advice: Go home and continue to wait. By any rational thinking, her house will a safe place, because there's no logic in Russian forces targeting civilians and destroying civilian buildings. He later sees the same woman in a local shelter. Her house was severely damaged by shelling aimed at the neighborhood.

It's the first of many early signs that Russia's attack on its neighbor is no "ordinary" war. Chernov and his fellow journalists, among and ultimately the last on-scene international reporters in the city, spend the proceeding weeks finding more and more evidence of that with every day, hour, and minute.

The footage here is unimaginably disturbing—so much so that the pelvis of one victim, a pregnant woman among many other patients and medical personnel at a maternity hospital, is blurred out. The film spares us this sight, despite all of the other imagery of wounded people, dead bodies, and blood-soaked surfaces. The decision is, perhaps, one of basic decency, but it only forces us to consider the terror and agony of thousands of wounded or dead people whom we don't see here.

These are, after all, only three people, trying to cover as much ground, obtain as much footage, and remain in the city as long as possible. It quickly becomes clear that any definitive account of the siege of this city is impossible and will remain so for likely a long time to come. Risking their bodies and their lives and their mental well-being, Chernov, Malokletka and Stepanenko do what they can against forces that they can see, as well as those that they can't.

On the more tangible front of those obstacles and threats, there's the escalation of the attack from artillery to fighter jets, which rain down bombs on any and every building they can without any discrimination for the civilian toll. Apartment buildings are hit, with Chernov's camera capturing the explosions from the relatively safe distance of a couple makeshift shelters and hospitals. We see the awful blasts, further ruining the lives of those who either have evacuated the city or, like the journalists, have found some place of shelter, and then, the sound of the explosion arrives, still sending a shiver through the bodies of those who have spent multiple days hearing them. The next one could be closer.

The shell and bombs soon become gunfire, which echoes through the city and signals that a new wave of attack—one that might specifically target these journalists for the footage they have been able to send to their editors, on the few occasions cellphone service briefly returns, and could send in the future. Tanks begin roaming the streets near the forced end of their assignment, because it is simply becoming too dangerous for them to stay with Russian troops closing in on any place of relative safety.

Just as with the bombs, Chernov's camera watches as the tanks' shells strike various buildings where people still could remain. At one point, Chernov points out that war brings out both the best—as survivors try to comfort each other and local police and Ukrainian soldiers hand out essential supplies—and the worst—as some begin to loot neighborhood shops and blame their own country people for what is happening—of people, but watching the indiscriminate attacks on civilian locations and civilians themselves starts to make us numb to the first possibility as any kind of reality.

As for actual reality, there's the nature of the unseen information war being implemented by the Russian military and government, too, with Chernov's team becoming a specific target. What is there to say, except that Russian officials expect people to believe them instead of what's right in front of us? There are those who will refuse to believe anything that goes against their own ideological biases, but that only makes the work being done by journalists like these three all the more vital. Here, Chernov, Malokletka and Stepanenko feel obligated to go out of their way—into an unknown and potentially dangerous situation—in order to uncover additional evidence about the attack on the maternity hospital, which Russia immediately deems to be a staged event.

20 Days in Mariupol may be a limited account of the invasion of Ukraine, the effects of it on the local population, and the efforts of journalists to report on it. The film is the truth, though, right in front of our eyes.

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