Ryder Film Series: 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL

February 2022: 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 — winner of the 2023 Sundance Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary — is the unflinching visual chronicle of this harrowing ordeal. Ukrainian war correspondent Mstyslav Chernov (he directs, shoots, and narrates) and 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, potently 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. (95 min)