0:00

Support for the Big Dig comes

0:02

from Bunker Hill Community College, now

0:04

registering for online winter session,

0:07

a three-week session starting January

0:09

2nd, designed to help

0:11

students catch up on classes and get

0:13

ahead. bhcc.edu/winter.

0:23

Hey there. So I'm not sure

0:25

how much you know about GBH,

0:27

the organization that produced this podcast,

0:30

but it is the source of a

0:32

lot of incredible journalism. And

0:34

today we're sharing an episode of

0:36

a podcast from our colleagues at

0:38

the Frontline Dispatch. The

0:41

Frontline Dispatch is produced by

0:43

the long-running and award-winning documentary

0:45

series, Frontline, on PBS. The

0:48

host is Raney Aronson-Roth,

0:50

Frontline's executive producer and

0:52

editor-in-chief. Earlier this

0:54

year, she sat down with the filmmakers

0:56

behind 20 Days in

0:59

Mariupol, winner of the Sundance

1:01

Audience Award. The documentary

1:03

is a collaboration between Frontline and

1:05

the Associated Press, and

1:07

it is an extraordinary firsthand account

1:10

of the Russian siege of the

1:12

Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. The

1:15

recording took place at the Boston

1:17

Public Library. You can

1:19

also watch the full documentary, 20 Days

1:22

in Mariupol, on frontline.org, as

1:24

well as YouTube, the PBS

1:26

app, and Prime. You don't

1:28

want to miss it. Now here's

1:31

the Frontline Dispatch. We're

1:33

so pleased to be here at the BPL

1:35

to talk about our documentary, 20 Days

1:38

in Mariupol, that we produced alongside

1:40

the Associated Press. We have with

1:43

us AP reporter, Mrs. Avsharana, who

1:45

directed and filmed this documentary. We're

1:47

also joined by Michelle Meisner, the

1:50

talented Frontline editor, who helped turn

1:52

this reporting into the unforgettable documentary

1:54

that it is. 20 Days

1:57

in Mariupol is an unflinching account.

2:00

of the Russian siege of the port

2:02

city of Mariupol, which remains

2:04

to this day under Russian occupation.

2:07

Really special, Mrs. Lev, to have you with us

2:09

all the way from Ukraine for you to be

2:11

in Boston with us today. Thanks for being on

2:14

the dispatch. Thank you.

2:16

I want to have you take us back to

2:18

the very moment that you and your two colleagues

2:20

made the decision to go into Mariupol. Well,

2:23

the story starts actually as

2:25

the invasion of Russia to

2:28

Ukraine starts not in 2022, but in 2014. My

2:33

story as a journalist working in Donbass

2:35

and in Mariupol too starts in 2014.

2:39

As many other documentary

2:41

photographers and videographers, I

2:45

became automatically a war

2:47

photographer, a war videographer, because

2:50

the war started in my country. Russia

2:52

invaded Ukraine. And throughout

2:54

these nine years, part of covering other

2:58

wars for AP and Syria,

3:00

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, I

3:03

was always going back to Ukraine. And

3:05

I was trying to

3:08

tell the story of Donbass people.

3:10

And through these nine years, we've

3:12

studied well the front line in

3:15

this gray zone, which was always

3:17

under attack. So

3:19

in February,

3:22

the whole beginning of February, we

3:25

could see that something is different and things

3:27

are heating up and Ukrainians

3:30

preparing more and more for

3:32

this probable upcoming invasion.

3:35

And on 23rd of

3:38

February in the evening,

3:41

piecing this puzzle together with listening

3:45

to what Russian media is saying, listening to

3:47

what our sources on the front line

3:49

are saying, we realized

3:51

that war is going to start

3:53

tomorrow. Or probably very,

3:56

very soon. So it was

3:58

late evening, and we spoke. to

4:00

AP editors and we

4:03

left for Marupol because Marupol seemed to

4:05

be one of the crucial

4:08

tactically, symbolically targets

4:11

for Russia. Right. So

4:13

if you can just tell us, people who

4:15

don't know exactly where Marupol is, help

4:18

us understand why you knew that that was going

4:20

to be such a strategic place for Russia as

4:22

they were coming into Ukraine. Yeah.

4:24

If you look at where the Marupol is

4:26

placed and what is Marupol in its core,

4:28

it's a huge port

4:31

and it's an economic

4:34

center of the

4:36

whole Donbass region. And

4:39

it's strategically positioned on

4:42

the way from

4:44

Russia to Crimea, which was occupied

4:46

in 2014. So

4:48

in order to make

4:50

this corridor to Crimea, Russia needed

4:52

to take it. And just

4:55

by its placement, you could see that

4:57

if the war is the full scale invasion is

5:00

going to really start, then it's going to be

5:02

surrounded. So we kind of

5:04

sat around the table and we

5:07

had this conversation whether we are

5:09

ready to be surrounded. And

5:12

we didn't know how long it's going to

5:14

be a siege. We didn't know how violent

5:16

it's going to be. We didn't

5:18

know if it is going to be occupied in the

5:20

end or not. But

5:23

we knew that we're going to get

5:25

surrounded at some point. Right. You

5:28

know, a lot of times when reporters

5:30

are calling me from the field, the

5:32

conversations are really serious about security, the

5:34

risks you're taking, the

5:37

thought behind going into a really dangerous

5:39

place. So tell me about your conversation

5:42

with your editors at that time. Everybody

5:45

understood it. And obviously,

5:48

it was a lot of discussions

5:51

and the security calls and discussions

5:53

about what's the plan for evacuation?

5:55

What's the plan for staying? In

5:58

the end, if you're... have

6:00

solid plan of your

6:02

operations and if you have security

6:05

assessment and plans how do you

6:07

escape in case A happens, B

6:09

happens, C happens, then

6:13

you go and you do your work until

6:16

time comes that you just can't. That's

6:19

exactly what happened. But what

6:21

we didn't expect that it's

6:24

not only the city you're going to get surrounded, that we

6:26

are going to be the last international

6:29

journalists who are going to be

6:31

reporting from the city and therefore our

6:33

names became known. We

6:36

couldn't just get lost in the

6:39

crowds anymore. How did

6:41

you know you were the last international

6:43

journalist and when that happened how did

6:46

that feel and tell me

6:48

about your colleagues too. In

6:50

the beginning of the siege we've seen a lot

6:52

of international press. When

6:55

the circle around Maripo

6:57

was closing there were

6:59

several convoys of journalists

7:01

and diplomats who were leaving the city

7:03

along with the civilians and

7:06

we knew that many journalists have left.

7:09

However we had solid plans on how

7:11

do we, what do we do in

7:13

case we get surrounded. So

7:16

we were not that worried again because

7:18

we didn't know that we will be

7:20

the last ones. And

7:23

then after a few days of reporting because

7:27

every morning I would try to in the

7:29

evening I would just run out of this

7:31

hospital where we lived and I would open

7:33

the phone, the satellite phone

7:35

and wait until it catches the connection.

7:38

You would have to wait for like 10 minutes to

7:41

sit in there and as soon as you get connection

7:43

you call to the editor and you start

7:46

asking questions. What happens to you,

7:48

to other Ukrainian cities and one

7:50

of the questions is obviously who

7:53

else is reporting from Maripo and

7:56

at some point they told

7:58

us no one else. is reporting

8:00

from there. Tell us about the two

8:02

people that you were with and the roles they

8:04

played. Yevgeny Maloliechka

8:07

is a still

8:09

photographer, an amazing photographer who

8:12

just got a world-class

8:14

photo. I worked with him for

8:17

nine years basically in Ukraine. We are

8:19

good friends and we trust each other.

8:21

That's what you need when you cover

8:23

in conflict actually. And film

8:26

producer Vasilysas Stepanianka, a young Ukrainian

8:28

journalist, is a part of a

8:30

generation of this amazing

8:33

young journalist who were

8:35

basically born, forged

8:37

through this war as

8:41

terrible as it is and gave

8:43

birth to the generation of young

8:45

talents. So Michelle, try to

8:47

remember the first time I told you about

8:49

what I was seeing coming out of Mary Eupole

8:51

and what we might do. Well

8:53

I remember a couple

8:55

of emails and a conversation with

8:58

you about this discussion

9:00

you'd actually just had with Mr. Slov and

9:02

some of his editors from the Associated Press.

9:05

And I think what was so remarkable about

9:07

it, one of the things

9:10

that was remarkable about it, is that they had just

9:12

gotten out of the city. So I think if they

9:14

escaped from Mary Eupole on March 16th, you

9:17

guys were talking days later. So

9:20

there was an urgency behind doing

9:22

the work and you said,

9:25

I want you to talk to Mrs. Slov. We

9:28

ended up talking the next day. The first

9:30

of many very long phone calls and Zoom

9:32

calls where you would tell me about everything

9:34

that had just happened and

9:36

you were already ready to do something with all the

9:38

footage that you were able to get out and

9:41

you didn't want it to just sit there on a

9:43

drive anywhere. It was important to do something with it.

9:45

And so we worked with the

9:48

Associated Press to get the footage from

9:50

where you were in

9:52

Ukraine to London to Boston

9:54

and our team at Frontline

9:56

helped make sure that that got ingested and

9:58

translated and worked. organize as quickly

10:00

as possible. So much work. A

10:02

lot of work. There's so much work getting out

10:05

of Ukraine with the footage, which you see in

10:07

the film. It's just remarkable. What

10:09

happened to get it all the way to Boston is

10:12

really another journey. Thank you

10:14

for reminding me about that. Literally

10:17

every hour I would be like, is the footage

10:19

here? I'm texting her. Did the footage make it?

10:21

Did we get it? Did we get the drive?

10:23

Is it real? Because we were in a conversation

10:26

with you. I knew it was going to be

10:28

powerful, but it was a whole journey to get

10:30

it all the way to Boston where we could

10:32

start to see more than what we had

10:34

seen in the news. So the

10:37

first time I saw you in Mrs. Lab, you

10:39

were sitting in Ukraine, a different part of Ukraine,

10:41

and you were in a very dark room. And

10:43

I'll just never forget that moment where I said

10:46

with your editors, do you want to make a

10:48

documentary? So take me to

10:50

the moment where you're thinking to yourself, Ashley,

10:52

I want to do something longer,

10:56

deeper documentary form. When

10:58

did you know that was possible?

11:01

I wouldn't say I was planning

11:03

to do documentary in Marlboro when

11:05

I was in Marlboro. I

11:08

was still filming news dispatches. But

11:11

at some point I realized that every

11:13

single moment matters, that I have to

11:15

just record everything. That didn't

11:17

happen immediately. After

11:21

several days I realized the

11:23

scale and how

11:25

much I could miss if I

11:28

just turned off the camera. So

11:31

I decided just not to turn it off

11:33

at all. Whenever

11:35

I can keep it on, it will

11:37

run on until I'm out of batteries.

11:39

Because that's the problem. Longer it runs,

11:42

less space you have on the hard drives later.

11:46

There is no place to charge batteries. So

11:48

you have to compromise whether you

11:50

just keep it rolling or

11:53

you shoot economically. And

11:56

because of that, yes, I missed important moments,

11:58

which I still regret. Michelle

12:01

and I talked a lot about this,

12:03

really centering a Ukrainian journalist's voice on

12:06

this and how different it was feeling

12:08

to us watching it. How

12:10

important was that to you because you've covered

12:12

so many different wars and

12:15

conflicts beyond your own country's conflict?

12:18

It's quite interesting that when you work in

12:20

news, you kind of try to

12:22

remove your identity out of your coverage. Right,

12:24

of course. So the fact that you are

12:26

Ukrainian is actually standing on the way of

12:29

the coverage. You have to separate

12:31

your emotions from what

12:33

you do. With good editors,

12:35

which I have, you can do

12:38

it. Great. But

12:40

for documentary film, it's very different.

12:43

I learned that it's very different. Deep

12:47

down, I know as a

12:49

newsmaker, as a person

12:51

who just shoots news, I know that

12:54

we form our understanding

12:56

of the current events

12:58

of the world around us by watching

13:00

news and consuming news. But

13:03

we, as a generation, form

13:05

our understanding of our past

13:08

with documentary films,

13:10

with books. So

13:13

film is a medium which carries

13:15

meaning across time for

13:17

generations to come. If I

13:19

was to tell the story of Marjupil to

13:21

my daughter or to fellow

13:24

Ukrainians, which was so important to me,

13:26

just to let them know what exactly

13:28

happened there. Also,

13:31

for those people who've been in

13:33

Marjupil, people who have been in

13:35

Marjupil and coming to see this

13:37

film, some screenings, yesterday's

13:40

screening, for example, or screenings

13:42

of the Sundance, there are people who got

13:44

out of Marjupil. They cry. It's

13:47

devastating for them. They come after

13:49

the film and they say, well,

13:51

thank you. Now

13:53

we know that this will not be forgotten.

13:57

Amazing. Okay, Michelle. There

13:59

were times. tons of conversations between the

14:01

two of you about like what could

14:03

be the voice of the film. So

14:06

talk about that. Mrs. Love really didn't want

14:08

to make it about himself or about journalists. He

14:10

didn't want it to be like a hero's

14:12

journey, hero's journalist story.

14:15

So I think

14:17

there was some, you

14:19

know, navigating how to achieve

14:23

using his voice and using your

14:25

position as a Ukrainian journalist to

14:28

tell the story but still keep it about the people of

14:30

Mary Oupol because that was so important to him as well.

14:33

So I think, and there were even some questions

14:35

that I know we, the three of us, maybe

14:37

would discuss feedback. Some people, like

14:39

sometimes a more traditional approach might be to

14:41

have him be on camera or to go

14:44

back in film or to sort of do

14:46

a more conventional storytelling.

14:49

But we really ultimately decided we were going

14:51

to stick with what we had and really

14:53

keep him behind the camera and sort

14:55

of you as you're

14:58

witnessing these horrific events have

15:02

him with you. You're

15:04

kind of standing next to him, right? So

15:08

you're seeing it through his eyes

15:10

rather than seeing him view it,

15:12

which creates a different feeling. We

15:14

would discuss, for instance, he was

15:16

directing it and he would help

15:18

write it, but maybe he didn't have to

15:20

be the person who was speaking. He was

15:22

trying to find ways to skirt around being the voice, but

15:24

ultimately I think it

15:28

felt like you had to be it. And his voice

15:30

also matches the voice from real

15:32

time footage from behind the camera. And so

15:34

that goes together. It was your decision to

15:37

speak in English. Well, that's true, Ashley. That's

15:39

a good point. We have a lot of

15:41

conversations about this behind the scenes. Why

15:44

did you decide to speak in English

15:46

versus Ukrainian or Russian? Or like,

15:48

what was your thinking? I

15:50

think this was one of the

15:52

things that naturally happened. We tried

15:55

to voice some scenes in Ukrainian

15:57

and in English as well.

15:59

And we just. to realize that there is

16:01

so much happening on the screen, it

16:03

would be much easier for the audience to figure

16:05

out what's happening if I spoke in English. I

16:07

think it was also because, I mean,

16:10

you were not only speaking

16:12

to a Ukrainian audience, you were

16:14

speaking to the world. The interesting thing

16:16

is that you hear almost

16:19

everyone who's speaking in Maripol is

16:22

in Russia. And

16:24

yes, this attempt to

16:26

sit and have conversation

16:31

with the audience,

16:35

with the whole world about what

16:37

happened in Maripol is like me

16:39

as a Ukrainian trying to tell

16:41

the world what happened, the stories

16:43

of these parents who

16:45

lost their children, the stories of these

16:48

people who lost their houses and

16:50

their city. So

16:53

yeah, English was, I think

16:55

it was the right choice. So

16:57

we have questions from the audience. So

17:00

Ms. Asav, the question is, how

17:04

do you maintain your humanity slash

17:06

sanity in a situation like

17:08

a brutal military siege? Thank

17:11

you for that question. It's actually

17:13

much harder to maintain sanity after

17:15

you left the siege than

17:17

during the siege because during

17:20

the life-treathing situations, you

17:23

don't have time to process any

17:25

traumatic events that are happening

17:27

to you. And that

17:29

applies to everyone, not only to journalists,

17:31

but whenever there is a

17:34

silence, a moment of

17:36

silence after it's all over, then when

17:39

things start happening in

17:41

your head. But also, we

17:44

are in somehow a privileged position that we

17:46

understand the purpose of what we do and

17:52

why we are going through these events.

17:55

We have made a choice, but those

17:57

people whose stories are not there, stories

18:00

we tell, they

18:02

don't know why this is happening

18:04

to them and they don't have

18:06

a choice and

18:09

for them it's much harder. So

18:12

I'm going to start with you, Michelle, on this question. So

18:14

you spent a lot of time in this film. You've

18:16

been with a lot of audiences now since

18:18

it premiered at Sundance. What are you hoping

18:20

that people take away from this film? Something

18:23

that someone said about the film after having

18:26

watched it, that they won't ever look at

18:29

news the same way again. And

18:31

for many reasons I think that that's a

18:33

really valuable idea to take

18:35

away from this story. I think that it

18:38

humanizes the people who are both in

18:41

front of the camera because of the way that

18:43

Mrs. Slav filmed it with compassion and refusing

18:46

to look away even when it got

18:48

hard, but also very respectfully and compassionately.

18:50

And then also the people who are

18:52

behind the camera, Mrs. Slav and Genya and Vaslisa

18:54

and the people who are risking so much to

18:56

tell these stories of potential war crimes. And

18:59

so I hope that people walk away with

19:01

that. The biggest

19:04

hope of every journalist that

19:06

is covering the war is

19:08

that his work

19:10

somehow will help people.

19:13

Looking forward, I hope

19:15

it just stays there for

19:17

history. Again, as I said before,

19:20

documentary films help further

19:22

generations to form their understanding

19:24

of what happened before. And

19:26

I just spoke with my

19:30

grandmother recently

19:32

who lived through Second World War

19:34

through Holocaust. And I

19:36

remember her being so furious

19:40

about some people claiming that

19:42

Holocaust never happened. Right. And

19:46

she was like, oh, but all

19:48

these photos and, you know, there is

19:51

proof that it happened. And

19:53

I thought, thank God we make

19:55

all these efforts now to

19:57

document every single. potential

20:00

war crime that happens in Bucha, and

20:02

the Frontline has a film about it, that

20:05

what happened in Mariupol. All

20:08

this seem

20:10

maybe lost in the

20:12

sheer amount of the chaos

20:14

of information that is happening around

20:17

us, but it's going to

20:19

be there to remember. And for those

20:21

who will doubt, 50 years

20:23

from now, 100 years from now, who will

20:25

say, oh no, no, no, no, nothing happened

20:27

in Mariupol, everything was fine. Look,

20:31

it's a new city. Well, in 100 years, maybe it's

20:33

going to be a new city, but

20:35

the film is going to be there. I

20:38

appreciate that so much. I think deeply about

20:40

that with our work in general, that I'm

20:44

really glad you brought up the conversation with your

20:46

grandmother, and also having

20:48

my own family coming from

20:50

Odessa, Ukraine, and also part

20:52

of my family that stayed that were lost in

20:54

the Holocaust, they would be

20:56

telling us the same thing. So almost

20:58

thinking about the history that we are

21:00

documenting right now and sharing, and

21:03

how it can endure. And I just really

21:05

appreciate that you were there to witness it,

21:07

collect it, and just the

21:10

bravery in general. So thank

21:12

you for your contributions to

21:14

really, truly history. And

21:16

thank you, Michelle, for being here, and

21:19

for being there all the time, but also

21:21

just for creating this with Mrs. Lapa too,

21:23

for you are really remarkable. Thanks

21:25

to Frontline for making this happen. Yeah,

21:27

we appreciate it. And thanks for being on

21:30

the dispatch and being with us at the

21:32

Boston Public Library. It's really been an amazing

21:34

moment. You

21:38

can watch 20 Days in Mariupol on

21:40

frontline.org, Frontline's YouTube channel, the

21:43

PBS app, and on Prime

21:45

on the PBS Documentaries channel.

21:50

20 Days in Mariupol was directed

21:52

by Mstislav Cherenov. It was

21:54

produced by Mstislav Cherenov, Michelle

21:56

Meissner, Darrell McCrudden, and me,

21:59

Ranie Aronson-Ross. This

22:03

podcast was produced by Emily

22:05

Pisa-Krada. Maria Diocno is

22:07

our Director of Audience Development. Catherine

22:10

Guiver is our Story Editor and

22:12

Coordinating Producer. Lauren Priscillo

22:14

is our Senior Editor. Frank

22:16

Q. Schum is our Senior Producer. Lauren

22:19

Eso is our Senior Editor of

22:21

Investigations. Andrew Metz is

22:23

our Managing Editor. I'm

22:25

Rene Erinsen-Roth, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer

22:28

of Frontline. Special

22:30

thanks to Evelyn Brido, Colin

22:32

Cockrope, and Eddie Hickey from

22:34

the House of the Boston Public Library. Music

22:37

in this episode is my solo icon

22:39

symphonic. The Frontline

22:41

Dispatch is produced at GBH and

22:43

powered by periods. Thanks for

22:45

listening.