Icelandic Documentarian: “Total Mayhem” in Kiev

Icelandic Documentarian Guðmundur Tjörvi Guðmundsson has been in Ukraine, filming the escalating violence between activists and riot police in Kiev. His footage was featured yesterday on CNN’s news program “The Situation Room,” hosted by Wolf Blitzer.

Guðmundur Tjörvi’s footage shows a protester being rushed into a makeshift surgery in a hotel by medics, after being shot in the neck by a sniper. Another clip shows protesters trying to help a man whose feet are on fire. Guðmundur Tjörvi described the scene, saying “[T]he riot police…had an armored vehicle that was hitting the barricade and people were flying all around the place and molotov cocktails and stun grenades…It was just total mayhem.”

When asked what the protesters have been telling him, Guðmundur Tjörvi replied that he’d spoken to two representatives from the main activist group. “They told me that they are tired of a couple of oligarchs owning most of the wealth in the country and they want to return that, back to the people. That’s what they told me.”

Guðmundur Tjörvi has spent many years living and filming documentaries in Kiev. The majority of his work there has focused on the lives of homeless children in the city. His documentary “Katja,” about a Ukrainian girl who ended up on the streets at the age of 11, was filmed over a period of nine years and is currently in post-production.

Watch the CNN segment here.