While many people have opinions about director Jonathan Glazer’s allusion to the current state of affairs in Israel/Gaza at the recent Oscars ceremony, fewer have remarked on Mstyslav Chernov’s equally powerful remarks when he accepted the Best Feature Documenary award for 20 Days in Mariupol. Glazer, who received the best international feature Oscar for Zone of Interest, was conflating the attitude that birthed the Holocaust to the way the world is now tacitly accepting the wholesale killing of civilians in Gaza, a view that is divisive. Chernov, whose movie is about Russia’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol at the start of Putin’s invasion last year, is not a filmmaker with a certain vistion, but rather a journalist, and so he is only interested in getting the truth out to the world, which is essentially what the movie is about. Right now, especially in the U.S., there is a difference of opinion as to whether Ukraine deserves to defeat its Russian invaders, but in any case Chernov’s footage shows that the atrocities are indisputable, and so those whose agenda is to somehow discredit Ukraine for whatever reason have nothing to say about the movie or Chernov’s chilling comment that he wished he had never had to make his film.

But he did have to make it, because that is his job. As a reporter for AP, Chernov and his video crew were in Mariupol when the invasion was launched, and he captures as closely as possible the violence visited on the residents of the city without really trying to determine their political stance, because all that matters during the 20 days recorded is survival, which is mostly a matter of luck. It’s clear that Russian planes and artillery are targeting civilian homes and public buildings, including hospitals (a preview of Gaza, as it were). This means Chernov and his crew are in as much danger as the people they are covering, and a good portion of the film is given over to the effort to just find a working signal to connect to the internet so that Chernov can send his footage to the outside world. Often he confronts people on the street who are fleeing from a bombed home or business. Sometimes they curse at him and call him a “whore,” but others understand: He has to show this to the world, so they talk to him and explain in horrifying detail the death or maiming of a loved one. Chernov shows the dead and mutilated bodies, which he doesn’t bother to edit—that will be done by the outside news media. “We keep filming,” he says during his typically hushed English narration, “and it just stays the same.” The carnage is especially distressing at a maternity hospital, where women are waiting to give birth. Many, along with their babies, die while doctors desperately try to save them. 

As Chernov explains at one point, Russian media tried to dismiss the footage by saying it was somehow staged, and you have to laugh at this ridiculous attempt at subversion of the truth. By its very nature, 20 Days in Mariupol defies critical analysis because it simply reveals what is happening without trying to uncomplicate the chaotic circumstances behind its creation. By that token, it is exhausting to watch, visceral in the most direct way, despite Chernov’s efforts to make it all coherent as a linear record of a historical event in the making. He also tries to contextualize what we are seeing, but if, like me, you find it hard to concentrate on the logistical and political ramifications of the attack because you’re despairing over the images, it only means you are watching it the way it was intended to be watched. You should be horrified and outraged. No other responses are valid. 

In English, Ukrainian and Russian. Opens April 26 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

20 Days in Mariupol home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 The Associated Press and WGBH Educational Foundation