The latest film by Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, killed at the beginning of April in Mariupol in Ukraine where he had shot it, will be presented out of competition at the Cannes festival, which announced it on Thursday May 12.
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Mariupolis 2
(1h45), which
"shows the life that continues under the bombs and reveals images as tragic as they are hopeful"
, has been added to the official list of films, just a few days before the opening of the 75th Cannes Film Festival Tuesday May 17.
It will be screened on May 19 and 20, it is specified in a press release.
Read alsoUkraine: Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius killed in Mariupol
The war
“in all minds”
The entire Festival program will have the war in Ukraine as a backdrop, inevitably
"in everyone's mind"
, according to its general delegate Thierry Frémaux.
Two generations of Ukrainian filmmakers will be present, with the regular Sergei Loznitsa for
The Natural History of Destruction
, on the destruction of German cities by the Allies during the Second World War, but also the young Maksim Nakonechnyi for
Bachennya Metelyka
(Un certain regard) .
Mantas Kvedaravicius, to whom we owe
Barzakh
(2011),
Mariupolis
(2016) and
Parthenon
(2019), was killed while trying to leave Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine.
He was 45 years old.
Russian director Vitali Manski then expressed his sadness on Facebook, declaring that his Lithuanian counterpart "
was killed today in Mariupol, camera in hand, in this shitty war of evil against the whole world
".
“In 2022, he returned to Ukraine, in the Donbass, in the heart of the war, to find the people he had met and filmed between 2014 and 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators did everything possible to continue to transmit its work, its vision, its films”
, specifies the festival in its text.
“His fiancée, Hanna Bilobrova, who accompanied him, was able to bring back the images shot there and put them together with Dounia Sichov, the editor of Mantas”
, he adds.
The latter said she was
“very moved to announce”
the screening.
“Mantas, thank you
,” she tweeted.
His previous film,
Mariupolis
(2016), told the story of a city under siege.
Born in 1976, Mantas Kvedaravicius made a name for himself with this film, shot in Mariupol and presented for the first time at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2016.
Also a doctor of anthropology, Mantas Kvedaravicius wanted to testify as a filmmaker,
“as far as possible from the agitation of the media and politicians”
, according to the press release.
