Directed by Ukrainian filmmaker and war journalist Mstyslav Chernov, 2,000 Meters to Andriivka (original title: 2000 метрів до Андріївки) is a harrowing, immersive documentary that many critics and audiences have already declared the most intense and emotionally devastating film of 2025.
Kabul 24: Chernov, who won the 2024 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature with 20 Days in Mariupol – the first Oscar in Ukraine’s history – returns to the front lines with even greater intimacy and urgency.
Where 20 Days in Mariupol documented the brutal siege of a city and the suffering of civilians, 2,000 Meters to Andriivka follows a single Ukrainian assault squad from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade as they attempt to retake the tiny, strategically important village of Andriivka, just 10 km south of the ruined city of Bakhmut, during the 2023 counteroffensive.The title refers to a literal distance:
two kilometers of scorched, mine-strewn forest that separates Ukrainian positions from Russian-held Andriivka. In peacetime, it’s a 10–15 minute walk. In war, it becomes an almost insurmountable hellscape of constant artillery, sniper fire, FPV suicide drones, and anti-personnel mines.
Chernov and his longtime collaborator, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, spend three months embedded with the squad, filming with helmet cams, drones, and handheld cameras. The result is one of the most visceral depictions of modern infantry combat ever captured.What makes the film so suffocating is its refusal to offer distance or relief.
There are no sweeping battlefield shots or geopolitical explanations – only the claustrophobic reality of soldiers crawling through blackened tree lines, waiting for the next explosion, and trying to stay human. Chernov’s calm, reflective voice-over – delivered in Ukrainian with English subtitles in most releases – becomes a haunting companion, revealing months later which of the young men we’ve come to know were killed, wounded, or simply vanished.
The soldiers are mostly in their 20s and early 30s: former IT specialists, students, and bartenders who joke darkly about their life expectancy. One tells Chernov he used to play in these very forests as a child; another quietly admits he hasn’t spoken to his mother in weeks because he doesn’t want her to hear the fear in his voice.
These moments of tenderness amid unrelenting violence are what break the viewer.Premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where Chernov won the Directing Award in the World Documentary competition, the film has since screened at Berlin, Sheffield DocFest, and Hot Docs, earning near-universal acclaim (93% on Rotten Tomatoes, 88 on Metacritic). Critics have compared its intensity to Come and See and Restrepo, while praising its moral clarity and refusal to aestheticize violence.
Released in November 2025 as a co-production between PBS Frontline, the Associated Press, and Ukrainian producers, 2,000 Meters to Andriivka was selected as Ukraine’s official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards and is considered a frontrunner in the Best Documentary category.
More than a war film, it is a meditation on the cost of resistance, the fragility of hope, and the terrifying banality of industrialized death in the 21st century. As Chernov says in the film: “They took rifles, I took a camera.
But we are all fighting for the right to exist.”For anyone wondering what the war in Ukraine actually looks and feels like on the ground in 2025, this is the closest most of us will – and should – ever get. Unforgettable, unbearable, and absolutely essential viewing.
