FRONTLINE FEATURES and AP Documentary “2000 Meters to Andriivka” Wins George Polk Award

WED., FEB. 18 — The George Polk Awards program at Long Island University announced today that 2000 Meters to Andriivka won in the Foreign Television Reporting category. The 2025 documentary feature from FRONTLINE (the PBS documentary series produced at GBH in Boston) and The Associated Press is a stunning portrayal of the war in Ukraine, from the trenches.

The George Polk Awards recognize exceptional work in long-form investigative or enterprise journalism, honoring storytelling that “focuses on the intrepid, bold and influential work of the reporters themselves,” and places “a premium on investigative work that is original, resourceful and thought-provoking.” 2000 Meters to Andriivka documents the toll of the Russia-Ukraine war from a personal and devastating vantage point and comes from the Oscar®-winning team behind 20 Days in Mariupol — including Ukrainian filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov, producer and editor Michelle Mizner, producer Raney Aronson-Rath and executive producers Aronson-Rath and Derl McCrudden. The documentary was filmed amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, as Chernov and his AP colleague Alex Babenko followed a Ukrainian brigade battling through approximately one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. 2000 Meters to Andriivka tells the stories of the soldiers on the war’s front lines — who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of their land.

“We’re honored to see 2000 Meters to Andriivka recognized with a George Polk Award,” said Aronson-Rath. “This film exists because of the fearless, on-the-ground reporting of Mstyslav Chernov and Alex Babenko, whose documentation of the 3rd Assault Brigade offers audiences an unflinching and urgent view from the front lines of this war. We share this honor with our editorial partners at AP and the entire film team.”

The film made its world premiere in January 2025 at the Sundance Film Festival and was the recipient of the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. Since its debut, the film has received numerous accolades, including the F:ACT Award at CPH:DOX, Best Documentary at Stockholm International Film Festival and Best International Documentary Award at Docaviv. In recent months, it was recognized with a duPont-Columbia Award, a Directors Guild Award, the Writers Guild of America West’s Paul Selvin Award and a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Documentary.

2000 Meters to Andriivka is a film from FRONTLINE FEATURES, a new initiative from the award-winning PBS series dedicated to producing cinematic feature-length and short documentaries for global, multiplatform distribution. 2000 Meters to Andriivka had its U.S. broadcast premiere on PBS stations in November 2025 and is now available to stream online at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and on the PBS Documentaries Amazon Prime Channel. The documentary is distributed domestically by PBS Distribution and internationally by Dogwoof. The 2026 George Polk Awards will be presented in April. Including this year’s win, FRONTLINE has earned eight George Polk Awards to date. Stream the award-winning documentary below: