Something to watch tonight: 2000 Meters to Andriivka

Another tem­por­ary obstacle in the trans­ition from Substack back to WordPress has been my health with a couple of ori­gin­al posts sty­mied due to a brief (but frankly ter­ri­fy­ing) couple of nights in hos­pit­al¹. I’m recov­er­ing now but I did­n’t get to see any new releases this week­end – and missed a couple of luc­rat­ive radio shifts too. This week might see a bit more recyc­ling here than I was planning.

As the world’s atten­tion turns itself to the Middle East², I can­’t help but won­der­ing what will become of Ukraine. Much of the ana­lys­is says that as long as they con­tin­ue to get sup­port from the West, the out­look is attri­tion­al but hope­ful, but they are cur­rently rely­ing on a change of heart from Elon Musk’s Starlink to give them an advant­age on the ground.

To see what that means in prac­tice, you should watch 2000 Meters from Andriivka, the most mem­or­able of the five films I pre­viewed from the 2025 New Zealand International Film Festival:

20 Days in Mariupol was a heart­break­ing doc­u­ment­ary about the relent­less Russian assault on the Ukrainian indus­tri­al city and the toll taken on the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. Thanks to journ­al­ists who refused to evac­u­ate when self-preservation instincts should have been scream­ing at them to get the heck out, we have a doc­u­ment of the atro­cit­ies com­mit­ted thanks to this pro­foundly stu­pid and unne­ces­sary war.

Now, more Associated Press report­ers have put them­selves in harm’s way for a film about the front­line in that con­flict, 2000 Meters to Andriivka. A tiny sliv­er of forest between two mine­fields is the path for Assault Battalion 3, on a mis­sion to lib­er­ate a tac­tic­ally import­ant vil­lage, poten­tially sever­ing the Russian sup­ply lines to Bakhmut. At least that was the theory.

Thanks to the embed­ded report­ers and GoPro hel­met cams on the sol­diers, we get as close to the hor­ror of battle as I ever want to get. I once hear someone describe the ter­rible hand-to-hand fight­ing in the Falklands con­flict – an ugly real­ity kept from the folks back home – as like “a daft brawl in a bar”. The Ukraine con­flict has more tech­no­logy than that – real-time drone foot­age allow­ing bat­tle­field com­mand­ers to steer their squads from fox­hole to fox­hole – but it’s still fierce and ter­ri­fy­ing, inch-by-inch.

I read some­thing the oth­er day point­ing out that Putin has been in charge of Russia for so long that any­one under 25 hasn’t known any oth­er régime. The indoc­trin­a­tion on the Russian side is com­plete and as long as they can con­tin­ue to throw will­ing bod­ies at the front­line no one in Ukraine – or the rest of Europe for that mat­ter – can be safe.

This film is des­per­ately sad and can’t avoid end­ing with a sense of hope­less­ness at the waste of it all.

Also in that fest­iv­al pre­view: Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, charm­ing and wist­ful The Ballad of Wallis Island, loc­al indie Workmates and the dis­ap­point­ing music doco Pavements.

Where to watch 2000 Meters from Andriivka

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada & USA: Streaming on PBS Documentaries³

UK & Ireland: Streaming on NowTV

India: Not cur­rently available

UK:

1. As much of the gory details as I am pre­pared to share here at Bluesky. ↩︎
2. Quick remind­er that all of Israel’s mil­it­ary adven­tures have the sole pur­pose of keep­ing Netanyahu out of a crim­in­al court for blatant cor­rup­tion. People are dying on both sides for the egos of two men. ↩︎
3. PBS Documentaries is a Prime Video chan­nel so you have to have that sub­scrip­tion first. ↩︎