An acclaimed US filmmaker was killed in Ukraine on Sunday after Russian forces opened fire on his vehicle.

Brent Renaud, 50, from Little Rock, Arkansas, was gathering material for a report about refugees when his vehicle was hit at a checkpoint in Irpin, just outside the capital Kyiv.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said the area had sustained intense shelling by Russian forces in recent days.

Mr Renaud was one of the most respected independent producers of his era, Christof Putzel, a filmmaker and close friend who had received a text from Mr Renaud three days before his death, said.

Mr Renaud and Mr Putzel won a 2013 Alfred I duPont-Columbia University journalism award for Arming The Mexican Cartels, a documentary about how guns trafficked from the US fuelled drug gang violence.

“This guy was the absolute best,” Mr Putzel told The Associated Press.

“He was just the absolute best war journalist that I know. This is a guy who literally went to every conflict zone.”

The details of Mr Renaud’s death were not made immediately clear by Ukrainian authorities, but American journalist Juan Arredondo said the two had been travelling in a vehicle towards the Irpin checkpoint when they were both shot.

Mr Arredondo, speaking from a hospital in Kyiv, told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli that Mr Renaud had been hit in the neck. Ms Camilli said that Mr Arredondo himself had been hit in the lower back.

“We crossed the first bridge in Irpin, we were going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car, somebody offered to take us to the other bridge, we crossed the checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” Mr Arredondo told Ms Camilli in a video interview.

A statement from Kyiv regional police said that Russian troops opened fire on the car. Hours after the shooting of Mr Renaud, Irpin mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city.

“In this way, we want to save the lives of both them and our defenders,” Mr Markushyn said.

The US state department issued a statement condemning attacks on news professionals and others documenting the conflict.

“We are horrified that journalists and filmmakers – noncombatants – have been killed and injured in Ukraine by Kremlin forces,” the department said via Twitter.

“This is yet another gruesome example of the Kremlin’s indiscriminate actions.”

Responding to news of Mr Renaud’s death, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for an immediate halt to violence against journalists and other civilians.

“This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the committee said on Twitter.

Along with his brother Craig, Mr Renaud won a Peabody Award for Last Chance High, an HBO series about a school for at-risk youngsters on Chicago’s west side.

The brothers’ achievements also included two duPont-Columbia journalism awards and acclaimed productions for HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, the New York Times and Vice News.

Mr Renaud was also a 2019 Nieman fellow at Harvard and served as visiting distinguished professor for the Centre for Ethics in Journalism at University of Arkansas. He and his brother founded the Little Rock Film Festival.

Among other assignments, Mr Renaud covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the devastating 2011 earthquake in Haiti, political turmoil in Egypt and Libya and extremism in Africa.

Mr Putzel, who worked with Mr Renaud for 12 years, paid tribute to his courage and passion.

“Nowhere was too dangerous,” Mr Putzel said. “It was his bravery but also because he deeply, deeply cared.”

Mr Renaud is survived by his brother Craig, Craig’s wife, Mami, and a nephew, 11-year-old Taiyo.