Novaya Gazeta Europe has published a selection of notable documentary and literary works from recent years devoted to the war in Ukraine and the lives of people caught inside it. The list includes films, books, and reported projects by Ukrainian and foreign authors seeking to document not only combat, but also everyday life alongside air-raid sirens, shelling, and death.
Among the works mentioned is a film by Mstyslav Chernov about the fighting for Andriivka, a village ten kilometers from Bakhmut. The director said he wanted to show war not as a set of dry bulletins, but in a way that placed the viewer beside Ukrainian soldiers in the same trench. The film was shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Awards in the documentary feature category.
The article also highlights Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol, made with photographer Yevhen Malolietka and producer Vasylysa Stepanenko. Based on footage from besieged Mariupol in spring 2022, the film brought Ukraine its first Oscar.
“I wish this film did not exist,” Chernov said while accepting the award.
The selection also includes a book by Ukrainian writer Viktoriia Amelina, written in English as a diary about war and the search for justice. It combines the author’s notes, interviews, reportage, and stories of women from different professions living through the war. Amelina began the project after the February 2022 invasion and later documented survivors’ testimony and war crimes together with human rights researchers.
The writer was killed after a Russian missile strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk before she could finish the book. In 2025, the work received the UK’s George Orwell Prize, becoming the first book by a Ukrainian author to win the award.
Other projects noted by the outlet include films by Sergei Loznitsa, Oksana Karpovych, and Vladimir Mansky, as well as books by Simon Shuster, Yaroslav Trofimov, Dmitry Durnev, and Serhii Plokhy about the war, its political context, and its human consequences.