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Evgeny Afineevsky’s Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom has it all: blood, sweat and tear gas.

See also: Ukraine’s children of war

In just an hour and a half, the film captures the view from the trenches of Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution, with special attention paid to the bravery and steely resolve of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who filled the capital’s central Independence Square, known as the Maidan, to protest President Viktor Yanukovych’s turn away from the European Union and toward Russia.

There are arresting montages of Molotov cocktail-hurling protesters between frozen barricades and burning tires, doing battle against phalanxes of riot police armed with clubs, water cannons and Kalashnikovs. There’s a triumphant finish when Yanukovych flees Kyiv and goes into Russian exile.

During the 93-day uprising, at least 106 protesters died, mostly by police sniper fire on Feb. 18-20, 2014. At least 18 policemen were also killed.

It’s all there in the film — because director Afineevsky was smack dab in the thick of it.

“I was under the bullets with everybody else,” he told Mashable in an interview by phone from his home in Los Angeles.

That closeness paid off. The New York Times gave the film a glowing review, and it won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. This month, it was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary film.

‘Something is happening in Kyiv’

Afineevsky flew to Kyiv in November 2013, with plans to stay only “a couple weeks” at the advice of a friend who told him, “something is happening here.” That “something” was a small protest that quickly erupted into the revolution.

“I had two cameramen. We were capturing every second,” Afineevsky said. “[The protesters’] unity was fascinating. Their power was fascinating.”

“We realized history was being made,” he added.

He kept the camera rolling for the next three months.

The film begins with shots of those first protesters, along with a brief lesson on modern Ukrainian history that includes the country’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

From there, Afineevsky brings viewers as close to the action as possible as events unfold. I was living in Kyiv at the time and covering the revolution from the start to Yanukovych’s ouster.

The film’s immediacy made me feel like I was back on the barricades: I could almost smell the sulfur from police stun grenades, the sweet scent of borscht boiling over field kitchen burners. I could almost feel the warmth of the barrel fires.

And then there are the familiar faces: Rather than voiceover, Afineevsky tells the story of the revolution through the personal accounts of Ukrainian activists and journalists who were there.

One of the most captivating comes from 12-year-old Roman Savelyev, who left home to join the ranks of the revolutionaries. Donning an orange construction hat and makeshift wooden vest, he helps in the protest camp’s tech tent, where he connects demonstrators living on the Maidan with their families back home. Eventually he takes up arms — in this case, cobblestones — to fight on the front lines.

‘Filmmaker, not a journalist’

If the film fails anywhere, it’s in its failure to address many of the complexities of the revolution. Noticeably absent from Winter on Fire are critiques of the more radical forces that were responsible for antagonizing police.

Moreover, there are no police voices or anti-Maidan protesters explaining their side.

Afineevsky, who was born in the Soviet Union, says the decision to exclude alternative viewpoints was a conscious one. In the beginning, he says he tried to be objective.

“When the students were beaten, I still tried,” he says, referring to the early morning of Nov. 30, when riot police brutally attacked peaceful demonstrators and pursued them with clubs to a nearby monastery.

Then he asked himself: “How could I be [objective] after seeing the blood coming from their faces?”

“I’m a filmmaker, not a journalist,” he added.

‘A manual for revolution’

Afineevsky’s bias hasn’t stopped praise from flooding in. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president who came to power after the revolution, called him “the Russian fighting side by side with Ukrainians on the ground” and presented him a medal for his work.

He got more positive feedback last week, when he says that Victoria Nuland — the U.S. assistant secretary of state who once famously handed out cookies to protesters on the Maidan — told him by phone that the film moved her to tears. Nuland could not be reached for confirmation.

And then there’s the Oscar nod.

Afineevsky admits he’d love for his film to win. But whatever happens on Oscar night, he’s thrilled about the global attention the movie has brought back to Ukraine, which faded from international headlines in recent months despite the war that’s still simmering in the country’s east.

For Ukrainians, he hopes Winter on Fire serves as a poignant testament to their countrymen who fought courageously and spilled their blood for the hope of a better Ukraine.

For others who may be oppressed, Afineevsky hopes it will also serve as a “manual for revolution.”

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