Mantas Kvedaravičius

Mantas Kvedaravičius (23 June 1976 – 30 March 2022) was a Lithuanian filmmaker, anthropologist, and archaeologist known for war reporting in hostile areas. He was killed during the Siege of Mariupol.

Life and career
Kvedaravičius held a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and was an associate professor at Vilnius University. His doctoral thesis concerned "Knots of absence: death, dreams, and disappearances at the limits of law in the counter-terrorism zone of Chechnya" (Cambridge University, 2012). War-torn Chechnya, one of the republics of the Russian Federation, is also the setting of his 2011 documentary film, Barzakh ("Limbo").

His next documentary film, in 2016, focused on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in 2014–15 and the attacks of separatist troops. In 2019, Kvedaravičius's first feature film appeared, Partenonas (Parthenon), set in Athens, Odesa, and Istanbul. Based on several years of ethnographic research, it is a movie about the enigmatic workings of memory. In arresting, often disconnected images, the pivotal character revives various lives he may have lived. "Memories betray him, but he knows for sure that in one of these lives, he will be killed."

Death
Working on yet another Mariupol documentary, Mantas Kvedaravičius was killed on 30 March 2022 during the Siege of Mariupol. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudsperson for human rights, alleged that Kvedaravičius "was taken prisoner by 'rashists', who later shot him. The occupiers threw the director's body out into the street". Kvedaravičius's friend, Hanna Bilobrova, reported that two days after his death, a Russian soldier led her to his body. She said that he had been shot in the stomach, but there was "no blood on the ground" and no bullet hole in the clothes he was wearing. Bilobrova brought his body home to Lithuania.

The killing of Mantas Kvedaravičius was condemned by the Director-General of the UNESCO Audrey Azoulay in a press-release published on the 6th of April. According to global monitoring on the safety of journalists by the Observatory of Killed journalist, Kvedaravičius is the 9th media professional killed by Russian forces in Ukraine in 2022.

Documentaries

 * Barzakh (2011)
 * Mariupolis (2016)
 * Mariupolis 2 (2022)

Feature film

 * Parthenon (Partenonas) (2019)
 * ''Prologos (2021)

Awards

 * 2022: Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts
 * Barzakh
 * Amnesty International Film Prize, 2011 Berlin International Film Festival
 * Best Film, 2011 Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival
 * Best Documentary, 2011 Lithuanian Film Awards
 * Amnesty International Film Prize, 2012 Ljubljana International Film Festival
 * Grand Prize, 2011 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
 * Best Lithuanian Debut, 2011 Vilnius International Film Festival


 * Mariupolis
 * Best Documentary, 2016 Lithuanian Film Awards
 * Best Director, 2016 Vilnius International Film Festival


 * Mariupolis 2
 * European Documentary, 2022 European Film Awards