Mariupolis 2, a documentary by the Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius about life in Mariupol under Russian attack, will open a film festival in Ukraine next month, reported LRT.lt.
Kvedaravičius, who filmed in the Ukrainian city in March 2022, was killed by Russians in Donbas last spring.
According to the press service of Art House Traffic, the Ukrainian premiere will take place on November 11 during the opening of the Docudays UA festival, and it will be released in wide distribution on 17 November. Kvedaravičius returned to Mariupol (where he had made his first film Mariupolis six years ago) in the wake of Russia’s full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Before the Russian military captured and killed the filmmaker, he managed to document life in the city under the threat of war.
The film was edited from Kvedaravičius’ footage after his death. It was preserved by his fiancée, Ukrainian Anna Belobrova, who was in Mariupol with him. She was able to take the footage to Lithuania, where she edited the film together with Dunya Sycheva, who also worked on Kvedaravičius’ earlier film Mariupolis. The film had its world premiere in the Out of Competition Special Screening section of the 75th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the special prize by the Golden Eye jury.
On April 3, 2022, reports surfaced that the Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Kvedaravičius died near Mariupol, where he wanted to shoot a sequel to his film Mariupolis. According to initial reports, his car was hit by a missile and the filmmaker was taken to hospital but could not be saved.
A few days later, Kvedaravičius’ fiancée Anna Belobrova and journalist Albina Levutina, who was with him in Ukraine, reported that in fact the filmmaker had been captured by Russian soldiers and shot. The misleading version of Kvedaravičius’ death was necessary so that his relatives could transport his body through the Russian territory.
