This week, FRONTLINE and The Associated Press’ acclaimed documentary 20 Days in Mariupol was honored at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) with the NPO Audience Award. 

According to IDFA’s official announcement, 142 films competed for this year’s NPO Audience Award. The winner of the grand prize is determined by festival visitors who rate the films directly following their screenings. 

20 Days in Mariupol is a visceral, first-person view of the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, told through the perspective of Ukrainian filmmaker and AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov. It follows Chernov as he and his Ukrainian AP colleagues remain trapped in the city of Mariupol, struggling to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. 

In the film, Chernov and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, become the last international reporters who remain in Mariupol as Russian troops besiege the city. Together, the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists documented what would become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

Directed, written and produced by Chernov, produced and edited by FRONTLINE’s Michelle Mizner, alongside producers Raney Aronson-Rath (FRONTLINE’s editor-in-chief and executive producer) and Derl McCrudden (AP’s vice president of news and head of global news production), 20 Days in Mariupol draws on Chernov’s daily news dispatches and personal footage of his own country at war. The result is a raw and haunting account of a journalist risking his life to share the truth of the conflict with the world.

This recognition comes on the heels of the documentary receiving two Critics Choice Documentary Awards, five Cinema Eye Honors nominations and a duPont-Columbia Award nomination earlier this month.

20 Days in Mariupol first premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, where it was the recipient of the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition Audience Award. 

The documentary makes its U.S. television premiere on PBS and will be available to stream on YouTube beginning Tuesday, November 21 at 10/9c (check local PBS listings). The film will also be available to stream on pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App, and in the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel at 7/6c. 20 Days in Mariupol is distributed domestically by PBS Distribution and internationally by Dogwoof. 

20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL Press Contacts
David Magdael & Associates, Inc.
David Magdael – [email protected]

PBS Distribution
Sara Giustini
[email protected]

FRONTLINE (PBS)
Anne Husted, Associate Director, Publicity, Communications & Awards
617-300-5312
[email protected] 

The Associated Press
Lauren Easton, Vice President, Corporate Communications
212-621-7005
[email protected]