Lexington resident Raney Aronson-Rath nominated for an Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol

The Oscars are coming up this Sunday, and Lexington resident Raney Aronson-Rath is one of the nominees.

Trapped in the city of Mariupol when Russia invaded, a team of Ukrainian journalists captured devastating images you probably saw on television — of a pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher from the remains of a bombed-out maternity hospital, families huddled in dark basements, mass graves. Their footage was the only video evidence of the atrocities committed during the invasion and siege that reached the wider world.

The Oscar-nominated documentary 20 Days in Mariupol builds on the reporters’ daily news clips to provide an in-depth, personal account of the invasion.

Lexington’s own Raney Aronson-Rath worked closely with director and reporter Mstyslav Chernov to craft this important evidentiary footage into a deeply moving documentary. The film is a collaboration between the Associated Press and PBS’s Frontline, where Aronson-Rath serves as Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer.

LexObserver spoke with Aronson-Rath about the film, the risks and rewards of reporting from a war zone, and (of course) what she’s wearing to the awards ceremony.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

LexObserver: Since this interview is for your local newspaper, I wanted to start with a personal question. Towards the beginning of the film, there’s a scene where doctors are desperately trying to save a four-year-old girl, Evangelina. I cried out loud watching that scene. There’s another where we see a father devastated by the death of his 16-year-old son. Your children are around that same age. You must have had to watch those scenes dozens of times working on the film. Can you talk about that — how you manage emotionally? 

Aronson-Rath: One of the very first scenes I saw was the father crying over his 16-year-old boy. It was rough footage, obviously, because it was not a film yet. At the time my son Arjun, who has grown up here in Lexington, was 16. And that cry from the dad — that moment helped me understand that if I was relating to this so deeply as a person, that it would probably resonate with others as well. It’s an incredible filmic moment, but it’s also just an incredible human moment that sort of transcends boundaries. That’s how documentary film can touch people. And the baby who dies — one of the most heartbreaking scenes, where the mother is not able to grapple with what’s just happened. You just imagine what that would feel like, being in her shoes. It’s really hard to imagine.

We try to make films that make you think hard and don’t keep you at a remove from the scenes and the emotions so that you can understand what’s really happening in the world.

LexObserver: The reporter, Mstyslav Chernov, talks about missing his own children while he’s in the field, and yet, he’s out there risking his life to make this film. Can you talk about why journalists take those risks, and why you think it’s worth it?

Aronson-Rath: We cover global issues — and even local issues can be threatening to journalists. 

We also know that journalists are under attack. You can see what’s happening in Gaza. You can see what’s happening all around the globe right now when it comes to the attack on journalists. 

We’ve done a lot of work in that area — like the film A Thousand Cuts, with Maria Ressa — to try to help people understand why journalists take this risk. And why do we support that? Why do I, as the editor-in-chief, think that’s important? 

It’s because if journalists aren’t there, in some cases, there will be no actual factual documentation of what happened. You can certainly say that in Mariupol — those three international independent journalists, they’re the only people who were able to document what happened in Mariupol in those final days. Something Mstyslav talks a lot about is the fact that — then, he left. A lot has happened since. 

In this case, the Associated Press was overseeing the team at the time, but we have filmmakers in really tough places all around the world all the time. We talk through the security risks. We are very careful to really support our journalists in the field. We put a lot of our resources towards supporting our journalists so that they’re as safe as possible, and if something goes wrong that we’re able to get them out of there. We spend a lot of time troubleshooting. We do not move fast. We don’t send people into places that we think are too dangerous. We kind of hold back until we feel like we can do something reasonably safe. But my theory is the more places we can be documenting, the better.

LexObserver: How does it feel when you’ve taken such a great risk, and then, like we see in the film, you have it undermined by the Putin government calling it fake news? 

Aronson-Rath: I think we’re facing this across the globe right now with the attack on factual information. Governments and individuals and movements are trying to take what’s really happening in the world that’s based on facts and fair reporting and twist it and manipulate it. And that is just disinformation at large. We’ve been reporting on this for years now. 

This case is so vivid because you have been with the reporters. You know that it’s real. You have been with the people who were bombed. You see it happening. You’re with the child who is asking for his mother. You’re watching this in real time, and then you see the manipulation happen by Russian propagandists, who we know are clever.

So they are manipulating images, and said one of the central people that was filmed was an actor. So the team had to go and verify that. I think part of the job of journalism now is to make sure what you’re doing is based in fact and verified — make sure what you’re doing is very, very locked down, because anything that you do can be questioned. And that’s good, right? That kind of check and balance on journalism is good. But when it then tilts into mis and disinformation is where you need to be ready to come back and say no, this is what actually happened.

LexObserver: The Oscars are this weekend. Will you be attending?

Aronson-Rath: Yes, I will be attending. And actually, I’m using a local Lexington designer for my dress.

LexObserver: I was going to ask what you’d be wearing but thought maybe it wasn’t appropriate to the conversation – but people will want to hear about a local designer! 

Aronson-Rath: A long time ago, because I work in public media and have to go to a lot of events, I figured out a way to have pretty dresses that weren’t over-the-top expensive. I sketch the dresses that I like and I have them made locally. I used to work with a local dressmaker in Lexington who retired. Now I’m working with Rachel Walters, who lives in Lexington and has a shop in Belmont. We’ve been working together and it’s really fun. She’s excited because, for her, she’s never had a dress that she’s designed and made go to the Oscars. It’s great to be able to support a local woman who runs her own business and is in our community. And also, it’s a beautiful dress!