Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Wars can begin in an instant, and drag on for an eternity. When Russia invaded Ukraine, that violent flash was initially captured by filmmaker/Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov in his Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days In Mariupol. Tanks rolled in, hospitals were indiscriminately bombed, and a city crumbled in real time. Years later, Chernov remains embedded in the war’s ruins. No longer documenting the energetic, volatile clarity of an initial aggression, 2000 Meters To Andriivka attempts to encapsulate the messy, Sisyphean struggle of the still-fighting underdogs in a single objective of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
This approach, as Chernov and fellow journalist Alex Babenko accompany a Ukrainian platoon as it slogs forward towards a strategic village, is both more straightforward than the gripping attack on Mariupol and more opaque.
The stakes are clear. The village of Andriivka, a key connection for Russian supply lines, lies 2000 meters away from Ukraine’s position. The only path forward, thanks to minefields on either side, is a small strip of forest leading directly to the town. Well, “forest” is a bit of a stretch; it’s really more like an extended abandoned lot, spotted by bare trees stripped to the trunk, littered with bodies and debris, marred by foxholes and trenches. It’s just enough junk to prevent vehicles from charging through, enough cover that it seems safer to trudge through than open air. The troops must proceed on foot, measuring progress by the centimeter, every step crunching a hundred downed branches and avoiding the detritus left behind by those who fell before you.
The shooting style, the contextualization within the larger conflict, and the interspersed quiet moments with the soldiers—these are more hazy, more shellshocked and haggard. The film is mostly composed of body and helmet-cam footage, placing the audience in the soldiers’ POV like they’re playing an intentionally confusing version of Call Of Duty. While these sequences are arresting (as are those where wounded, hopeless soldiers abandon their disabled vehicles and attempt to pile survivors into others), they juice one’s adrenaline because of how desperate and hard to comprehend they are. Where are the bullets coming from? Is there someone in that hole? Has my friend just been erased from this world, right beside me? These are the constant questions fraying the nerves of the soldiers whose eyes we share. More damningly prosaic than the overwhelming chaos of a war movie’s climactic assault, 2000 Meters To Andriivka marches through death by a thousand unknowns.
There’s still heartstopping terror and momentary poetry in this toil. As the film’s team gets closer to their goal, 2000 meters reducing to 1000 meters and so on, the start-stop momentum dictated by Ukranian headquarters (monitoring via drone and commanding via radio) allows for brief interludes spent getting to know the infantrymen. They’re first watched over by a soldier with the callsign “Freak,” whose alma mater is a rival to that of the director’s. There’s the older guy who promises to quit smoking—no, to smoke a little less—after this campaign. There’s the young man who’d been playing war since he was a kid, and still looks like a kid playing war underneath the oversized dome of his helmet. Voiceover relates their eventual fates. Some are final, mortal, while others remain more uncertain, but no less tragic. They add painful weight to moments simpler than the of-the-second personal experiences in 20 Days In Mariupol. To an extent, it’s because there’s only one real experience a soldier can have in the trenches: One of quotidian shittiness (“Fuck,” complains one soldier attempting to aid his injured comrade, “This tourniquet fucking sucks.”) and rage.
This is so effectively recorded that Chernov’s larger state-of-the-war narration is woefully unnecessary; the bleeding, exhausted combatants, screaming at the equally exhausted invaders to surrender, express things perfectly. So too does this attack, this attempt to secure one strip of land and one empty, demolished village. It’s one deadly fight for rubble in what will be an endless succession.
As 2000 Meters To Andriivka allows its drone shots to linger—either emphasizing the absurdity of fighting over a long runway of unmowed lawn and the graveyard it leads to, or soaking in the somber stillness of a literal graveyard filled with young Ukrainians—the film’s back-and-forth between panic and mourning takes on a dissociative friction. Not entirely immersed in either, not in those fleeing like in the excellent In The Rearview or those fighting like in Porcelain War, the film is lodged in a quagmire not unlike its subjects. The jittery, terrifying footage, made even more intolerable by Sam Slater’s droning vocal and bass score, assures viewers that war is hell. It’s easy to believe. 2000 Meters To Andriivka is an on-the-ground document of a war where the only victories are pyrrhic, the only flags being raised are over ashes. But the soldiers, and Chernov, can only continue to shoot.
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
Release Date: July 25, 2025
