20 Days in Mariupol, a visceral, first-person view of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, won the award for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards®. The film is told through the perspective of Ukrainian director and Pulitzer Prize-winning AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov.
20 Days in Mariupol follows Chernov as he and his Ukrainian AP colleagues remain trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol, struggling to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. After nearly a decade covering international conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war for The Associated Press, 20 Days in Mariupol is Chernov’s first feature film.
Chernov and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, were the last international reporters to remain in Mariupol as Russian troops attacked the city. Together, the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists documented what would become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital and more.