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When Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" on February 24, 2022, Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Evgeniy Maloletka headed immediately to Mariupol, the eastern Ukrainian city just 60 kilometres from the Russian border. They arrived to quiet streets just before the first bombs fell. No one would have believed the horror to come, and without their courageous work, no one could. As the only international reporters in the siege, they documented Russia’s actions. The images are extreme. Children are killed. A maternity hospital is destroyed. “This is painful to watch. But it must be painful to watch,” Chernov says. The inclusion of such graphic content becomes immediately understandable, however, as clips of Russian television are cut into the real-time horrors, claiming each foreign report is “fully staged” fake news. Winner of the Sundance Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, this devastating war diary is required viewing. Myrocia Watamaniuk

Streaming online May 5-9. Streaming is only available in Canada.

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