Ukrainian documentary 20 Days in Mariupol makes it to BAFTA longlist in two categories

The documentary film 20 Days in Mariupol by Mstyslav Chernov entered the longlist of the British BAFTA Film Awards with two nominations at once — as the best documentary film and film in a foreign language.

Such information appeared on the award's website, Rubryka reports.

In the long lists, each nomination has ten candidates. Sixty films were submitted for consideration in the Best Documentary nomination.

BAFTA shortlists will be announced on January 18, with the awards ceremony to be held a month later on February 18.

The BAFTA Film Awards are an annual award presented by the British Academy of Television and Film Arts. This is the British equivalent of Oscar.

What is known about the movie 20 Days in Mariupol

20 Days in Mariupol is the directorial debut of a war correspondent, photographer, videographer, and writer Mstyslav Chernov. The tape tells about the first weeks of hostilities in Mariupol, Donetsk region, during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Photographer Yevhen Maloletka and producer and journalist Vasylisa Stepanenko joined the creation of the picture. They became the last journalists to cover the beginning of Russia's destruction of Mariupol, for which all three won the Pulitzer Prize. The movie became the highest-grossing documentary in Ukraine last year, collecting ₴500,000 for the first weekend of release alone.

The film was immediately entered into two Oscar-2024 categories: Best Documentary and International Film.

The film's world premiere took place at the independent film festival in the USA, Sundance, where the film received the prize of audience sympathy. Also, the work was nominated for the Audience Award in the American documentary film competition Cinema Eye Awards for the title of Outstanding Documentary Producer of 2024 from the American Producers Guild, and the film is also a contender for the Shevchenko Prize-2024.

In addition, 20 days in Mariupol received:

• the special Tim Hetherington Award at the Sheffield DocFest 2023 documentary film festival in Great Britain;
• the award of the International Film Festival in Cleveland (USA);
• the DocAviv Award (Israel);
• the DocEdge award (New Zealand);
• Cinema for Peace Award (Germany);
• Royal Television Society Award (Great Britain);
• victory in the national feature competition DOCU/Ukraine of the 20th Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival;
• Audience Award at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival 2023 in Amsterdam.

As reported, the Ukrainian documentary film 20 Days in Mariupol won the audience sympathy prize at the Amsterdam festival.

It should be noted that Chernov's film 20 Days in Mariupol became the highest-grossing documentary film in Ukrainian distribution.