Ukrainian director and journalist Mstyslav Chernov explained how the idea for the film “2000 Meters to Andriivka” emerged. He said work on the project began in the summer of 2023, when the team was simultaneously holding international screenings of “20 Days in Mariupol” and traveling to the front line in Ukraine.
Chernov said the screenings were taking place in Los Angeles, New York, and cities across Europe. At the same time, he noted, the Ukrainian front was engulfed in fighting and the long-anticipated counteroffensive was underway. According to him, this was the central story at the time for Ukrainians and for the international media alike.
“I was literally torn between two worlds: in one, I had to walk red carpets, speak with audiences, and remind them about Mariupol and the war crimes Russia committed in Ukraine; then I would fly to Poland, cross the border, and together with Oleksandr Babenko head to the front line, jump into a trench, and begin working,” Chernov said.
He added that the film’s cinematographer and co-producer was Oleksandr Babenko. The director said he kept thinking about what really lay behind newspaper headlines about advances at the front: how many kilometers had been retaken, which villages had been liberated, and at what cost.
Chernov stressed that dry numbers and place names often sound too abstract to people far from the war. That is why he wanted to bring together two worlds — the front line and audiences outside Ukraine — and show the real human experience behind brief battlefield updates.
In his view, “2000 Meters to Andriivka” is not only a story about the distance to the enemy or to a military objective. It is also a film about the distance between Europe and Ukraine, a gap the viewer, he said, should feel as sharply as possible.