The Reel Review
Embedded photojournalists from the Associated Press capture the first 20 days of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine from within the strategic port city of Mariupol, chronicling the city’s humanitarian crisis amidst its rapid disintegration into absolute carnage.
Writer/director Mstyslav Chernov takes us on a deeply personal, immersive journey into the first few days of the war, highlighting the Russian military’s relentless shelling and airstrikes of civilian residential areas, universities and hospitals. The quickly rising death toll forces Ukrainians to bury their dead in mass graves. The tearful children who survive the constant barrage of airstrikes are traumatized. This is not a film for the squeamish.
Seeing the chilling footage of dying civilians, among them children, broadcast in news programs around the world, only to have Russian officials and Russian state television falsely call them fake news, will be beyond infuriating for anyone watching this film with an objective eye.
REEL FACTS
• 20 Days in Mariupol won the 2024 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film.
• Evgeniy Maloletka’s photograph of the injured pregnant woman being carried from the maternity hospital was awarded “World Press Photo of the Year” in 2023. Just minutes after her baby was stillborn, 32-year-old Irina Kalinina died from her injuries caused by Russian forces.
• While official numbers are impossible to verify, it is believed that somewhere around 350,000 Ukrainians and 1.1 million Russian soldiers have died in the war.
Video & Photo
