Austrian Filmmaker Michael Glawogger Dies While Shooting in Africa

Documentarian reportedly contracted Malaria while in Liberia

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Michael Glawogger, an Austrian filmmaker, has died at the age of 54.

The director, who made both documentaries and narrative films, was shooting footage in Africa for an upcoming film when he died, Film and Music Austria reported on its website.

“We are both as an industry and as a person deeply shocked and speechless,” filmmaker Danny Krausz wrote in a statement.

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Glawogger was making a documentary about a year of traveling around the world, which he was also writing about in the form of diary entries for Der Standard newspaper in Austria.

Glawogger was best known for his advocacy documentaries that looked at the lives of disaffected populations around the world, especially with regard to how they were affected by industrialization. In 1998, he looked at the lives of workers in four international hubs of commerce in “Megacities”; in 2011, Glawogger examined prostitution in Bangladesh, Thailand and Mexico in “Whore’s Glory.”

He also made several narrative features, including “Slumming,” “Contact High” and “Kill Daddy Good Night.”

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