20 Days in Mariupol

Thanks to our film sponsors Stephen Golden and Susan Tarrence!

Winner! Audience Award / World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2023

Ukraine’s official Academy Award submission for Best International Feature Film!

Following the film, a discussion about the challenges and dangers of journalism in war zones with William Schmidt and Jim Nintzel. Saturday, October 14 screening only.

As Russian troops advance on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, a small crew of Associated Press reporters are trapped amongst the besieged civilian population. 20 Days in Mariupol is the vivid, unflinching visual chronicle of this harrowing ordeal. Ukrainian war correspondent Mstyslav Chernov (who directs, shoots, and narrates) and his colleagues are the only international correspondents left in the city, witnesses to the first sighting of a “Z” on a Russian tank (a declaration of war), random shelling, the bombing of a maternity hospital, the digging of mass graves, and Russia’s eventual encirclement of the city. Their images of war crimes would soon go viral,  exposing Russia’s monstrous lies that deny their targeting of Ukrainian civilians, and earning the AP team two 2023 Pulitzer Prizes: for Public Service Journalism and Breaking News Photography.  An act of bearing witness to the horrors still occurring one year later, this breathtaking documentary is a bold and brave document of the tragedies of war and tyrannical regimes. (Dir. by Mstyslav Chernov, 2023, Ukraine, in Ukrainian/Russian/English with English subtitles, 94 mins., Not Rated)

Other festivals: Sundance, Seattle, Hot Docs

William Schmidt is the former deputy managing editor of The New York Times. Schmidt spent 32 years with The Times, retiring in 2013. As a correspondent, he was based in Times bureaus in the US and in London and ran foreign bureaus for Newsweek in Cairo and Moscow. His reporting experience includes coverage of the civil war in Lebanon and the war in Bosnia. As a senior editor at The Times, he helped develop security protocols and training for Times staff in conflict zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Until 2021, he was on the faculty of the UA School of Journalism, where he was the former director of Center for Border & Global Journalism.

Jim Nintzel is a member of the Report for America Corps serving as government and political impact reporter for the online Tucson Sentinel. Nintzel previously worked as executive editor of the Tucson Weekly. As a reporter, he covered politics, science and rock ’n’ roll for the Weekly. He has been a regular correspondent for Tucson and Phoenix PBS and NPR affiliates and has appeared on ABC News, CBSN and CNN, among other outlets.