Film Screening of "20 Days in Mariupol" | Director: Mstyslav Chernov

Film Synopsis: Trapped in besieged Mariupol, a team of Ukrainian journalists documents the atrocities of the Russian invasion. Their harrowing footage captures some of the war’s most defining and devastating moments.

Director’s Statement: “The Russian soldiers were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in. We were the only international journalists left in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and we had been documenting its siege by Russian troops for more than two weeks. We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage. Suddenly at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: “Where are the journalists!?” I looked at their armbands, blue for Ukraine, and tried to calculate the odds that they were Russians in disguise. I stepped forward to identify myself. “We’re here to get you out,” they said. The walls of the surgery shook from artillery and machine gun fire outside, and it seemed safer to stay inside. But the Ukrainian soldiers were under orders to take us with them. We ran into the street, abandoning the doctors who had sheltered us, the pregnant women who had been shelled and the people who slept in the hallways because they had nowhere else to go. I felt terrible leaving them all behind…As shells crashed nearby, we dropped to the ground. Time was measured from one shell to the next, our bodies tense and breath held. Shockwave after shockwave jolted my chest, and my hands went cold. We reached an entryway, and armored cars whisked us to a darkened basement. Only then did we learn from a policeman why the Ukrainians had risked the lives of soldiers to extract us from the hospital. “If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie,” he said. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.”...It was March 15. We had no idea if we would make it out alive.”

Mstyslav Chernov is a video journalist for The Associated Press. His courageous reporting in Mariupol earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

This screening is presented as part of our ongoing programming for Amidst Cries from the Rubble: Art of Loss and Resilience from Ukraine. 

We are grateful to the International Folk Art Foundation, Friends of Folk Art, and donors to the Museum of New Mexico Exhibition Development Fund, including Mark Naylor and Dale Gunn, Gwenn and Eivind Djupedal, Rosalind Doherty, Barbara Forslund, David Vogel and Larry Fulton, The Gale Family Foundation, and TOKo Santa Fe for their support of Amidst Cries from the Rubble: Art of Loss and Resilience from Ukraine and its related programming.