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20 Days in Mariupol Movie Review

20 Days in Mariupol is a 2023 Ukrainian documentary film directed by Mstyslav Chernov. It’s a harrowing, but far from great documentary.

As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities. This movie was critically acclaimed and it received some big award nominations, but that was due to purely its thematic importance rather than any intrinsic cinematic qualities that it presents.

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My main issues with the film are its cinematography and narration. The movie was filmed in that off-putting handheld manner that was at times quite annoying and unnecessary. The movie simply looked cheap, which did give it some urgency and authenticity from a journalistic perspective, which is why this fares much better as journalism than as cinema.

I also did not like its narration, which I found to be repetitious, frustrating and overwhelming. It would have been a much better choice to just shoot what’s happening and let it speak for itself. This way, the movie spelled everything to its audience, making it seem too obvious.

With that being said, 20 Days in Mariupol is still a valuable film that offers an atrocious look into everything that was going in the city back in 2022. People hiding in ruined buildings, children crying, wounded civilians, killed cats, chaos and destruction everywhere – these images are presented to us throughout this haunting documentary that feels urgent and heartbreaking in those depictions.

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What I also appreciated was the lack of any politics in the final product. We do not have the glorification of Zelenskyy nor do we see all that much condemnation of the Russians, which was actually strange to see. What we do get is just another look into the horrors of war and how it impacts regular people. The best moments here are the interviews with the people on the streets and I wished that there was more of that human element throughout. It’s a graphic, difficult to watch, but pretty important movie that sails through due to its subject matter and not its filmmaking merit.