This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoul.

The film 20 Days in Mariupol is an extraordinary documentary that chronicles Russia's attack on one of Ukraine's largest cities, which is now destroyed.

When full out war began two years ago this month, a number of journalists started heading to Mariupol, thinking Russia would likely

attack it.

It was so dangerous that within days, only a small team from the Associated Press was left.

The images and video they shot were broadcast across the world in small clips on the news,

some of which you may remember, like video of a bombed maternity hospital ward.

Mstislav Chernov was the videographer on that team.

When he and his colleagues were eventually smuggled out of the city, he had hours and hours of footage,

so he decided to make a feature-length film.

His documentary chronicles his 20 days there chronologically and gives us the larger context of those

clips we saw on television. 20 Days in Mariupil is now up for best documentary at the Oscars

and the BAFTAs and Mistislov is with us in our London studio today. Mistislov, hi, welcome to the show.

Hi, thank you for the invitation.

And we're grateful to have you.

I want to start by asking you a little bit about yourself, if you don't mind.

You're a journalist and a videographer.

You've covered many conflict zones.

But you started as a fine arts photographer, and you've written a novel that reflects on the experience of war.

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, interesting that we start from

there. As many other Ukrainian journalists, writers, filmmakers, a war started in Ukraine in 2014,

and we all kind of automatically became war correspondents, each one in our own way.

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