French photojournalist and filmmaker Christian Poveda, age 52, who filmed a hard-hitting and controversial documentary movie ("La Vida Loca") about a violent street gang in El Salvador, was brutally murdered this week. Police say that Poveda was driving back from filming in La Campanera, an overcrowded ghetto that is a stronghold of the Mara 18 gang, when he was apparently ambushed and shot four times in the face.

According to the Chicago Tribune, "Poveda's body was found alongside of his car; none of his expensive cameras or equipment was missing."

"Christian is just one of the 10 who will die today," photographer Edu Ponces wrote on the Salvadoran Internet newspaper El Faro. "If you look long enough down the throat of the lion, he will eat you."

A brief article about the murder in the Times Online has more details, and includes a link to some gut-wrenching clips from "La Vida Loca". The video below has no violence, but features an interview with Poveda made by the LA Times in April 2009:

Some of Poveda's photos on Flickr: http://bit.ly/1oJEx