After the resounding success of "20 Days in Mariupol," which became the first Ukrainian film to win an Oscar, Mstyslav Chernov returns to the front lines — this time with a camera in his hands, but even closer to those who hold the defense every day.

His new film, "2000 Meters to Andriivka," focuses not on the city or the global history of the war, but on the fate of a single unit that moves step by step through forests and plantations to liberate a small Ukrainian village. At the center are the soldiers, their faces, voices, and emotions, which we see not only through the director's eyes, but also through cameras mounted on their helmets.

This change of scale—from the image of the whole Mariupol to the story of a few people—seems to be both a narrowing and a deepening of perspective. Chernov explains: the closer you look, the more symbolic each detail becomes. Andriyivka can be read as a metaphor for hundreds of Ukrainian villages, and one landing—as a symbol of the endless front. In a conversation with film critic Natalia Serebryakova, he talks about why he decided to embed himself in a combat group, how the perspective of helmet cameras differs from traditional documentary filmmaking, how he worked with editor Michelle Meisner on the balance between reality and ethics, and why it was important for him that the premiere be the first viewing of the film for the soldiers themselves.Subscribe to LIGA PRO to read this article. Go to the full version of the page.

Mstislav Chernovfilm 2000 Meters to Andriivkawar movie