Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 12 March

20 Days in Mariupol (Chernov, 2023)

In the 2023 Booker Prize-winning nov­el, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, the gov­ern­ment of mod­ern Ireland is slowly taken over by author­it­ari­an forces who sup­press dis­agree­ment using impris­on­ment and intern­ment, even­tu­ally redu­cing the coun­try to a bloody civil war as res­ist­ance fight­ers become as ruth­less as the régime they are attempt­ing to overthrow.

The pur­pose of the nov­el is to prompt empathy for the people all over the world who have become refugees, by show­ing how eas­ily that social deteri­or­a­tion can hap­pen in a civ­il­ised nation, one that’s sup­posedly com­posed of rules and norms.

I’ve been think­ing about that book a lot recently because of vari­ous devel­op­ments in our loc­al polit­ic­al con­text, but it hit home pretty hard dur­ing the early scenes of 20 Days in Mariupol where the Russian inva­sion of Ukraine has only just been announced by Putin and the stra­tegic port city – only 50 km from Russia – is bra­cing for the unknown.

Detached and semi-detached houses line broad boulevards that could be some­where like Palmerston North. Apartment build­ings sur­round social court­yards. There are soc­cer fields and fit­ness centres. The down­town has a human scale that New Zealanders will recog­nise. There’s a middle class nor­mal­ity every­where. What is about to hap­pen is simply incon­ceiv­able to them.

But soon after that, the shelling begins and some of those sub­urb­an houses are on fire. The hor­ror of the siege, and then the inva­sion, of Mariupol has begun.

What hap­pens after that is the rap­id unsched­uled dis­as­sembly of a society.

The hos­pit­als fill up with civil­ians – many of them women and chil­dren – injured by muni­tions tar­geted at where they live, play and work. Soon, the few city work­ers still able to report for duty are dig­ging mass graves for those that can’t be saved.

I was sur­prised – per­haps I shouldn’t have been – at the loot­ing. The stu­pid greed on dis­play as people steal wi-fi routers, soc­cer balls and hair gel. But maybe that’s a psy­cho­lo­gic­al response to the ter­ror, a way to feel like you are in con­trol of some­thing. Anything.

The nar­rat­or quotes a Mariupol doc­tor: “War is like an X‑ray. It shows you what’s inside every­body. Good people get bet­ter. Bad people get worse.”

20 Days in Mariupol is more than just a col­lec­tion of grue­some news video. It’s much more stra­tegic­ally con­struc­ted than that. It’s a per­son­al jour­ney for dir­ect­or Mstyslav Chernov, a vet­er­an cor­res­pond­ent reflect­ing on all the pre­vi­ous con­flicts he has covered, and also acknow­ledging the sur­viv­or guilt after finally escap­ing the hor­ror in one of the last ‘human­it­ari­an cor­ridors’ before the doors were shut for good on the Russian crim­in­als and their barbarism.

But it is the remark­able record of the human tragedy that is the last­ing leg­acy of the film. The images may be of Ukraine, but they stand for all the oth­er atro­cit­ies that we have not seen. They are spe­cif­ic to Mariupol, but not unique. 

I only sat down and watched this film yes­ter­day and, yet, my dreams last night were full of images pro­voked by it.

So, I’m haunted by it now, which I’m not best pleased about, but it gives you an idea about how power­ful the exper­i­ence is.

One final thought about 20 Days in Mariupol …

The film would not exist if it wasn’t for the Ukrainian employ­ees of the Associated Press who decided they had to stay in the city when the inter­na­tion­al media moved out.

While Chernov’s voi­ceover is scep­tic­al of wheth­er their foot­age will change any­thing – it nev­er has before – Vladimir, the police cap­tain who attempts to chap­er­one them through the chaos, is determ­ined that they should film as much as they can and then get their evid­ence out to the world somehow.

Sure enough, we do see clips of their work fea­tured on tele­vi­sion net­works all over the world, only for the report­ers to be accused by the Russians of sta­ging ‘fake news’ for pro­pa­ganda pur­poses. The film proves the ridicu­lous­ness of that state­ment bey­ond all doubt.

So, it is a work of journ­al­ism, and a cel­eb­ra­tion of journ­al­ism, arriv­ing in New Zealand at a time when – in less than three months – we will have about 200 few­er news-gatherers serving our own civil soci­ety – invest­ig­at­ing, fact-checking, ana­lys­ing, challenging.

Which brings me full-circle, back to Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, and I’m ask­ing myself – how impossible is that scen­ario? A lot less impossible without journ­al­ists, I should think.

Where to watch 20 Days in Mariupol

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada: Not cur­rently available

USA: Digital rent­al from Amazon but also stream­ing on some PBS stations

UK: Digital rent­al from the usu­al outlets