AUGUST 28, 1976 — APRIL 2, 2022
45 YEARS, FILMMAKER, SCIENTIST
Mantas Kvedaravicius was a Lithuanian director and scientist. He arrived to Mariupol with his fiancé, a Ukrainian national, Hanna Bilobrova. Mantas intended to film a follow-up to his documentary «Mariupolis» (2016) which told a story of the city life during the times of war in the East of Ukraine. On March 19, the couple crossed the demarcation line. They had a whole lot of provision with them to help the locals. They sheltered in the basement of a destroyed church; along with thirty people, most of whom were the elderly and mothers with children from the nearby houses, demolished by enemy fire.
Mantas went missing after he took off to find people willing to try and escape the city. For several days, his fiancé had searched for her beloved all over the bombed Mariupol. She resorted to asking the Russian soldiers for help. Hanna found Mantas dead. He was face down. There was no trace of blood on the ground, therefore the journalist had been killed elsewhere. Mantas had a gunshot to the abdomen, yet there was no matching hole on his clothes. According to Ukrainian officials, he was captured by the Russian military who took his life and dumped the body in the street. His fiancé Hanna believes that Mantas was shot dead when he was arrested under suspicion of him being an undercover sniper from Lithuania — the country is a member of NATO. This piece of information was revealed by a Ukrainian who was detained at the same time with Mantas. Hanna, putting her own life at risk, spend for days on the road delivering the body to Lithuania via Russia.
Mantas was born on August 28, 1976 in Birzai. In 1998, he graduated from the history faculty of Vilnius University. In 2007, he graduated from University of Oxford, department of social and cultural anthropology. He had held a PhD from the University of Cambridge since 2013. He taught theory of religion, law and politics in the latter. He is a co-author of 16 scientific publications.
Mantas did not study to become a director. He had been conducting anthropological research in Chechnia. He was working on his dissertation, and got curious what could be expressed by means of documentary, not just words. That is when he started filming. His picture «Barzakh» (2011) tells a story of people going missing in Ramzan Kadyrov-era Chechnia. «Mariupolis» reaped numerous awards, including «Silver Crane» at the Lithuanian Film Awards and was nominated for «Amnesty International Film Prize» at the Berlin International Film Festival. «Parthenon» (2019) digs deep into the outskirts of the West, examines the boundaries of bodies, hearts and minds in order to distinguish geographical, historical, physical and emotional ties among humans; the film looks for the memories, fears and, possibly, hope.
Mantas’ partner managed to move more than his breathless body; she smuggled the footage that the director had filmed. Hanna had finished «Mariupolis 2»; the film depicts the suffering of people who had to endure the atrocious bombardment by Putin’s regime. At the 75th Cannes Film Festival, the picture was selected by Jury as a winner of Golden Eye award. War is a concept that means so much more, the couple used to say.
Gunfire, explosions of shells and bombs serve as a soundtrack for «Mariupolis 2». It starts with a scene in the basement. In pitch dark, a person and a dog stare at the door frame; the light beams in, but the danger lurks — outside the door, a multistoried building is on fire. The morning comes, people rejoice at the sunlight and warmth. New dawn breaks after the darkest night. Sadly, Mantas will never witness a new dawn.
