Lithuanian Filmmaker Kvedaravicius Killed In Besieged Ukrainian City

Mantas Kvedaravicius

Noted Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius has been killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where there has been weeks of heavy fighting since Russian invaded the country last month.

Russian film director Vitaly Mansky said on Facebook on April 3 that Kvedaravicius died after a missile hit his car in Mariupol over the weekend.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry confirmed Kvedaravicius had died while trying to leave the city.

The 45-year-old filmmaker had for years documented the city on film and was recording a new report about the ongoing siege of Mariupol by Russian troops.

Kvedaravicius, who was also an anthropologist and archaeologist, was an author of the 2011 documentary Barzakh (Limbo) about the two devastating post-Soviet wars in Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya.

Another documentary he made, Mariupolis, showed everyday life in Mariupol in 2014, when Russian troops unsuccessfully tried to take over the city following Moscow's occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.