20 Days in Mariupol (2023) on Netflix
NR20231h 35mDocumentary
Russian forces besiege Mariupol in February 2022. Ukrainian journalists remain in the encircled city, filming what the invasion does to the people there and working to send the footage out.
- Netflix4.7/5
- IMDb8.6/1065,649 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
A team of Ukrainian journalists stays behind in Mariupol in February 2022 as Russian forces encircle the port city and begin their bombardment. Over twenty days the crew records what the invasion brings to the people who remain, including the aftermath of the bombing of a maternity hospital and what the journalists describe as war crimes committed by Russian forces against civilians. Their footage documents the siege itself. Getting the material out is hard because the connections to the outside are cut, and reports can be sent only from the one place in the city where an online signal still reaches. Only a fraction of what the crew records can be transmitted while the shelling continues.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about 20 Days in Mariupol (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Only ten percent of the AP team's footage could be sent out, from Mariupol's last remaining online connection, under the stairs by a crushed grocery store. The rest, including 30 hours of Mstyslav Chernov's video, was carried out through a humanitarian corridor on 15 March 2022, when his crew were the last journalists in the city.
- A planned October screening at the Beldocs festival at the Lazarevac Cultural Center outside Belgrade was canceled after the far-right Serbian Radical Party called the film anti-Russian propaganda of the Kyiv regime. It was eventually shown in Belgrade on 21 February 2024.
- Mstyslav Chernov's film was Ukraine's submission for Best International Feature at the 96th Academy Awards, but was instead nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and won that award.
- The Associated Press team documented the Russian siege and the resulting humanitarian disaster from 24 February 2022; AP was the first to show the consequences of Russia's bombing of Mariupol maternity hospital No. 3.
- In Ukraine the film took more than 530,000 UAH (about US$15,000) on its first weekend in September 2023, becoming the highest-grossing Ukrainian documentary in history.
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