Mantas Kvedaravičius’ debut documentary was presented at the Docpoint festival in Helsinki in 2011.
Lithuanian documentary director and anthropologist Mantas Kvedaravičiuksen is believed to have died Saturday in Mariupol, Ukraine, where he had been documenting events in the region for a long time.
The death of Kvedaravičius, 45, is reported by the news agency Reuters, which bases its information on a colleague from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and the director.
However, the Reuters news agency has not been able to verify the information.
“We lost a very well-known artist in Lithuania and in the world who worked until the very last moment, despite the danger, in Russian-occupied Ukraine,” said the Lithuanian president. Nauseda Gypsies According to Reuters.
Lithuanian According to the 15min news agency the pilot would have died in Mariupol, where his car was hit by a rocket. He would have been taken to the hospital where he would have died.
The Ukrainian news agency Unian also reported on the director’s death and quoted a Russian director Vitali Manskia:
“Our friend was murdered today in Mariupol, the camera in his hands, in this lousy war of evil,” Vitali Manski wrote on Facebook. Manski leads the International Documentary Film Festival, in which Kvedaravičius has also participated.
Kvedaravičius already in 2016 released a documentary about the events of Mariupol in its time Mariupol. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The film tells the story of Mariupol, a strategically important route to the Russian-speaking part of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
The city was a major target for Russia when it invaded Ukraine on 24 February. The ruined city has been besieged for weeks, and the approximately 160,000 people trapped there have little food or water.
Kvedaravičius had released his debut documentary in 2011. Barzakh told of Chechen families who had lost someone close to them. He was the producer of the documentary, which won an award at the Berlin Film Festival Aki Kaurismäkiwhich Kvedaravičius had met at the Vilnius Film Festival.
The film was also awarded by the human rights organization Amnesty International, whose secretary-general Julia Duchrowthanked the director in 2011 for his great courage and willingness to bring human rights violations to the attention of the public.
“The audience was taken to villages, to people’s lives and souls. … Mantas Kvedaravičius has shown great courage: filming without permission, at great personal risk. ”
Barzakh documentaries was screened in 2011 in Helsinki as the opening film of the Docpoint Festival.
To HS, he said he filmed his film in secret between 2006 and 2009. At the same time, he did fieldwork for his dissertation on social anthropology, which he prepared for the University of Cambridge.
Kvedaravičius said he was interested in how the Chechens dealt with what they experienced and began to explore various reality-building stories: prophecies, dreams, fabricated documents, and confessions obtained through torture.
“Someone told me about mothers who dream of their sons. I wanted to describe the dream and how dreams shape everyday life. ”
Although the war was already officially over in 2011, people still disappeared.
According to Kvedaravičius, the situation was reminiscent of the dirty war in Argentina, during which thousands of people were killed by a military junta.
“A lot of people want to believe everything is going well now, even though the violence has just changed shape. The nightmare has normalized and the violence has become superficial. Even now, someone is in pain, ”Kvedaravičius told HS in 2011.
News Mantas Kvedaravičius came just after was reported famous Ukrainian photojournalist Max Levin from death. His body was found near Kiev on Saturday, Ukrainian authorities said.
Levin had been filming the war in several international publications. He has been missing since March 13th.