Oscar-nominated documentary filmmakers risked their lives to tell raw stories

In the opening moments 20 days in MariupolIn Mstislav Chernov’s chilling account of the siege of a Ukrainian port city, a Russian tank marked with an ominous “Z” turns its turret toward a hospital. On the top floor of the building, Chernoff and his small team recorded as the cannon slowly rotated toward them, preparing to fire.

“The tank fired on the hospital above the floor we were on,” he says. “It fell between the fifth and sixth floors and a patient was killed by this shell.”

This was one of the many times he risked his life to demonstrate the Russian army’s destruction of the city and its systematic targeting of civilians. He remembers feeling like his life was about to end.

“At that exact moment in the movie, this moment of uncertainty, the moment when the tanks are firing on residential areas, when the hospital is surrounded and we’re surrounded, that’s what I’m thinking about,” he recalls. “I’m thinking about my family, my daughters, and the fact that I probably won’t make it out alive.”

Throughout documentary production, filmmakers have been willing to sacrifice their integrity in order to tell stories full of danger. A number of these films have gone on to receive Academy Award nominations. Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington captured fierce battles in Afghanistan between the Taliban and US forces in their 2010 film. Restrepo (A year later, Hetherington was killed while covering the civil war in Libya.)

Director Yevgeny Afineevsky went to the heart of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution to direct his 2015 Oscar-nominated film. Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Struggle for Freedom. Peaceful protests against the Russia-allied government turned violent when forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing dozens. “I was so busy documenting that I didn’t worry about bullets flying over my head or batons falling,” Afineevsky said.

In recent years, Firas Fayyad (The last men in Aleppo), Talal Derki (Of fathers and childrenWaad al-Khatib (For Sama), and Matthew Heinemann (Cartel land) put themselves in extreme danger to complete their Oscar-nominated films. Going back even further, combat photographer Pierre Schöndörfer photographed battles between American and North Vietnamese soldiers for his Oscar-winning 1967 film. Anderson species.

Chernoff isn’t the only Oscar-nominated director this year who faced mortal danger while making his film. Without his camera, Ugandan director Musa Buyo would have been killed while filming Bobby Wine: The People’s PresidentWhich he co-directed with Christopher Sharp. A potentially fatal incident occurred in November 2020 when Buyo traveled alongside a convoy carrying Bobi Wine, the Ugandan pop star-turned-politician who was running for president against the country’s dictator, Yoweri Museveni.

“I was on a motorcycle and filming,” Boyo says. Before that, security forces loyal to Museveni set up a checkpoint. They started firing tear gas and bullets. This military man makes eye contact with me. Then he raises his gun and points the gun. I had a camera in my hand, so I held it to my face. The man fired. I was shocked. The shell hit the camera, and the camera helped change direction (but the bullet) still hit me in the cheek… I hit the ground, and lost consciousness for a few minutes. I have never felt such excruciating pain.

“My face was swollen, and I was bleeding,” he says. “I woke myself up pretty quickly. But shockingly, the guy was standing right above me, aiming to fire another shot. That’s when I started running. There was a motorcycle going by. I jumped on him and told the guy to get away. That’s how I got out of it.”

He says his loved ones urged him to abandon the documentary. “Everyone was calling and saying: Look, Moses, you don’t have to do this. This is a brutal regime. This is not going to change. But this story, it’s a national story. For the first time in the history of our country, here was a charismatic leader, a young man, offering himself to lead the youth.” ..and the oppressed people of Uganda, to free themselves.The story overshadows the stakes.

By Indian-Canadian director Nisha Pahuja, director To kill the tigerThe stakes increase as she follows her documentary, set in the Indian state of Jharkhand. The film tells the story of Ranjit, a poor farmer, whose 13-year-old daughter Kiran becomes the victim of a brutal sexual assault at the hands of three young men. Ranjit and his wife Jiganthi were under immense pressure from the villagers to acquit the attackers and marry their daughter to one of her attackers. They refused.

“As the case progressed, and as it became clear to everyone in the community that despite all their efforts, the family was not going to drop the case, and that they were going to seek justice, things started to get more intense.” Pahuja says. “The family was threatened, the crew was threatened… There were many, many different ways to try to convince the family to drop the charges, but they persevered.”

Pahuja and her team were filming at Ranjit’s humble home when angry villagers gathered, threatening to burn down the house with the family and film crew inside. This was the culmination of a growing feeling of unease on the part of the director, who rented a house outside the village while he was making To kill the tiger.

“I was a woman; I was alone. I knew things were tense. I knew it was a problem. I knew what I was doing was rocking the boat. “I was living in this house alone,” she says. “I was definitely conscious and looking over my shoulder…”

on To kill the tigerThe presence of cameras served as both provocation and protection. “Our main concern was the family and how they feel, and what do they want us to do? Do they want us to keep shooting? Should we stop? But they didn’t,” says Pahuja. “They wanted us to keep shooting… They understood that “The camera gave them a kind of protection. They felt that because we were filming, no one would ever do anything. They would think twice.”

By contrast, Chernov knew that carrying a camera – and wearing a bulletproof vest marked “Press” – would not protect him in Mariupol. The Ukrainian director says that for countries like Russia, “information is a weapon.” “So journalists are soldiers, which is very annoying because that makes us a target, and it makes documentary filmmakers and journalists – everyone with a camera – a target.”

His long experience in conflict journalism — covering wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and elsewhere for The Associated Press — told him that Mariupol would likely be a hotspot if Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He headed there hours before the Russian attack, but not before making last-minute preparations to mitigate the risks.

“We bought extra spare tires; We bought a lot of food. And I remember the night before the invasion, everyone looked at us like crazy people and were like: What are you doing? Why do you need two spare tires at three in the morning? “Why do you buy kilos and kilos of food and dozens of boxes of food in the middle of the night?” He remembers. “And my answer was: ‘Well, the war is going to start.’” We rented at least two places where we could stay on different sides of the city depending on where the Russians were coming from, or if the electricity was (out) in one neighborhood and not in another.

“Even if people don’t believe you or think you’re crazy, these preparations are very important,” he says. “And then there were preparations about communications and backup plans for escape. Every time you talk to the editor (at the AP), it starts from a security assessment. What is the nearest shelter? Where is the nearest medical evacuation point? Where is the front line now? And so on and so on.” “So forth. I think that allowed us to survive, that preparation and that experience.”

to prepare Bobby Wine: The People’s President Buyo faced a dilemma: either stay in Uganda and tempt fate or leave his homeland and extended family behind. He says that after his wife became the target of kidnapping attempts twice, he made a decision.

“That was the moment when (co-director) Christopher Sharp and (producer) John Batsek realized we had to flee the country,” he recalls. “In March 2022, after I shot the final scene of the film, we left Uganda not knowing whether we would return or not.”

He and his wife have taken refuge in the United States, where they are raising their 19-month-old son, Joshua. While their application for political asylum is being processed, they can travel within the United States but not beyond that. “If I left the US border, I would never be able to come back. So, I am detained inside the United States, but again, it could be worse. People have lost their lives because of the oppression in Uganda, because of the regime. But I am alive. I am grateful So. The attention the film has received is truly appreciated. It goes further to highlight the struggle for freedom and democracy in Uganda and uphold democratic values ​​around the world.

A sense of higher obligation took Chernov away from his family to do 20 days in Mariupol. His youngest daughter was only six months old when the war broke out. After international journalists evacuated Mariupol for safety reasons, the director and his team stayed behind, realizing that without visual documentation, the world would never realize the scale of the tragedy – the thousands of innocent children, women and men killed in the merciless Russian attack.

“The worst thing is that when you don’t have a record of anything, that empty space gets filled with false narratives generated by perpetrators,” Chernoff says. “I think it is very important to make sure that every shot and every minute that was recorded in Mariupol – but also in other places in Ukraine now, which we don’t necessarily see in the news – is recorded and preserved, because there will come a time when everything will be questioned, and He rejected everything. And at that moment, obtaining these records is extremely important for the history of Ukraine and the history of the world.