“20 Days in Mariupol” received a prize at the Sundance Film Festival
Ukrainian military commander Mstislav Chernov’s documentary “20 days in Mariupol” about the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine received the prize of audience sympathy at the American independent film festival “Sundance”.
Together with Chernov, photographer Evgeny Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko worked on the film. They arrived in Mariupol as Associated Press journalists on February 24, just before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The team recorded everything happening in the city, including the mass burials of civilians, the humanitarian disaster due to the siege of the city and the actions of the Russian military. It was they who showed the world the consequences of the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital.
In mid-March, the journalists left Mariupol through the humanitarian corridor. Video materials taken by Chernov from the city formed the basis of the documentary.
For their work, Chernov, Maloletka and Stepanenko have already received several international awards, including the Press Freedom Awards 2022 and the Gongadze Prize.
A total of 12 films were presented in the world documentary section at the Sundance Film Festival, including the film “Iron Butterflies” by Ukrainian director Roman Lyuboy about the crash of a passenger Boeing in Donbass in 2014. The main prize of the festival was awarded to the film “Eternal Memory” by the Chilean Mayta Alberda, which tells the story of a couple suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
