2000 Meters to Andriivka: "War is slowly crawling around us and touching all of us. So the question of how to remain human is the core question of our survival in the modern world."

In this conversation, Ukrainian director, novelist, and war correspondent Mstyslav Chernov reflects on 2000 Meters to Andriivka as a deeply personal follow‑up to 20 Days in Mariupol, shifting from documenting unbearable loss to showing how ordinary people who’ve lost everything fight back for their homes, memories, and agency. He describes choosing Andriivka—a village and forest that mirror his own childhood landscapes—as a symbolic microcosm of the war, and explains how the film’s helmet‑cam immersion matters less for its combat than for the fragile, intimate moments with soldiers joking about cigarettes, family, and broken toilets under artillery fire. Mstyslav talks about walking the thin line between honoring courage and sacrifice and insisting that war is a nightmare that should not exist, arguing that truly anti‑war cinema makes viewers feel individual lives rather than abstractions like borders or casualty numbers. He and Vanessa speak about the surreal whiplash between awards‑season red carpets and front‑line trenches, the erosion of faith in international justice, and his belief that while films alone cannot stop a war, they can secure a form of historical justice by preserving how events really unfolded. He closes by stressing that every citizen eventually faces a choice about their country’s future, and by reaffirming his commitment to keep telling war stories—through documentaries, scripted films, and literature—as an act of resistance against propaganda, forgetfulness, and what he calls a world “on fire.” Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe