Hanna Bilobrova, the Lithuanian film-maker’s partner and collaborator, managed to retrieve his footage from Mariupol and turn the material into a new film
invaded Ukraine in February, Mantas Kvedaravicius decided he had to be there to document it. He abandoned his work—a fictional feature film called “G.O.M.A.”, which was in production in Uganda—and, along with his partner and collaborator, Hanna Bilobrova, travelled from east Africa to Mariupol.
At the beginning of April Kvedaravicius went missing. Ms Bilobrova spent days searching for him before a Russian soldier led her to his corpse. Lyudmyla Denisova, the ombudsman for human rights in Ukraine, said that the film-maker was “taken prisoner by ‘rashists’ [Russian fascists], who later shot him. The occupiers threw the director’s body out into the street.” News of his death provoked widespread condemnation of Russian forces.
Cannes has condemned Vladimir Putin’s war. The official Russian delegation was uninvited from the prestigious festival and journalists from pro-Kremlin outlets were refused accreditation. It is showing other films by Ukrainian auteurs, including “The Natural History of Destruction” by Sergei Loznitsa and “Butterfly Vision” by Maksym Nakonechnyi. During the opening ceremony a pre-recorded address from Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, was played.