Mstyslav Chernov’s 2024 Academy Award®-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol offered audiences a visceral view of the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its civilian toll. Now, in 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Chernov turns his lens towards Ukrainian soldiers — who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of land.

Amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, Chernov and his AP colleague Alex Babenko follow a Ukrainian platoon traversing through one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the small, Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. But the farther the soldiers advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realise that, for them, this war may never end.