On 24 February 2022, Russian fascist Vladimir Putin decides to become a Hague-indicted war criminal. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine starts, massacring in order to create a Greater Russia, journalist Msytslav Chernov teams up with Frontline PBS and Associated Press to document the siege of Mariupol. Several people flee the coastal city, while those who stay witness shelling, bombing, lack of electricity, water and food, forcing some to break into stores and steal any food left. The hospital is overwhelmed with wounded people from the shelling. On 9 March, Russian forces bomb the maternity hospital: a pregnant woman's pelvis is crushed, and she dies. As Russian tanks invade the city, Chernov is ordered by his boss to leave the city. Around 2,000 cars with civilians evacuate in a Red Cross convoy, arriving to safety, outside the occupied territory.
There are some movie for which you know that its scenes will haunt you for the rest of your life. Mstyslav Chernov's documentary "20 Days in Mariupol"—for better of for worse—may have at least six of them, unforgettable in its painfulness. It is a direct, depressing, shocking and unflinching recording of history, of a community that was destroyed in the war. Chernov is an example of the right man being on the right place, since the magnitude of events happening in Mariupol were of such relevance that practically anything he filmed made for a great documentary: he asks a little girl hiding in the basement during the bombing how she feels, and she responds with crying: "I don't want to die". A medic in an ambulance giving CPR to a 4-year old wounded child, trying to revive the kid. Firefighters breaking the wall-fence to enter a backyard in order to extinguish a fire on the rooftop of a hit house. A scared hamster running on the street, lost, while its owner tries to catch it. A man showing a turtle in a plastic storage box in water, saying "It also just wants to live", not knowing how to feed it when people themselves experience a shortage of food. A scared older woman shouting outside that she doesn't know where to go. A doctor unwrapping a blanket to show the corpse of a baby in the basement of the hospital. Similarly like "Schindler's List" and "Shoah", "20 Days in Mariupol" also shows how pure evil can destroy the lives of people, how a totalitarian dictatorship negates any human right or dignity, and how people are trapped in a cycle of violence caused by irredentism and annexationism, in this case Greater Russia. It is an outstanding chronicle, powerful and emotional, a memory to all those who want to forget "inconvenient" history, and a mental diagnosis of Goreshist Russia, a miscarriaged society.
Grade:+++
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