In The Hot Zone: Oscar-Nominated Documentarians Put Their Lives On The Line To Shed Light On War, Dictators, Injustice
deadline.comIn the opening moments of 20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov’s chilling account of the siege of the Ukrainian port city, a Russian tank marked with the ominous ‘Z’ swivels its turret toward a hospital.
On an upper floor of the building, Chernov and his small team record as the cannon slowly rotates towards them, preparing to fire. “The tank did shoot the hospital right above the floor we were at,” he says. “It hit between the fifth and sixth floors and a patient was killed with that shell.” It was one of many times he put his life at risk to show the Russian army’s destruction of the city and its systematic targeting of civilians.
He remembers feeling his life was about to end. “Exactly in that moment in the film, this moment of uncertainty, the moment when tanks are shooting at the residential areas, when the hospital is surrounded and we are trapped, that’s what I’m thinking about,” he recalls. “I’m thinking about my family, about my daughters, the fact that I probably will not make it out alive.” For as long as documentaries have been made, filmmakers have been willing to sacrifice their own safety to tell stories rippling with danger.
A number of those films have gone on to earn Academy Award nominations. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington captured ferocious firefights in Afghanistan between the Taliban and U.S.
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