Ruth Vandewalle finished her master's degree Middle East Studies and Arabic in Cairo, where she is based since 2009. She started working as a news producer during the Arab Uprisings in 2011. Since then she has covered the news from all over the Middle East, producing numerous reportages for different European media.
As a documentary maker and researcher, Ruth prefers to work on social and cultural stories that show a broader perspective and a diverse image of the region. She is often on the road, working in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman & Algeria or wherever stories take her.
As a freelance correspondent Ruth mainly works for Dutch and Belgian TV, radio and written press. She has won the Dutch journalistic 'De Tegel' award in 2014 for the reportages she made in Syria for the Dutch current affairs program 'Nieuwsuur'.
Together with Magnum Photographer Bieke Depoorter, Ruth worked on the book 'As it may be' for which she wrote an essay about postrevolutionary Egypt and the process of Depoorter's journey through the country that started in 2011. The book was published by Aperture (US) and came out in 2017.
Ruth likes to collaborate on projects that aim to tell a deeper story, such as Cairopolis (2013) and 'In Between' with photographer Bieke Depoorter (2011-17). In 2021, she made the documentary #ThisisEgypt2 in which she offers a different perspective on life in Egypt's dictatorship ten years after the uprisings in Tahrir Square began.
Occasionally, Ruth revisits Belgium to pursue projects that are dear to her, such as the podcast 'Monsters don't exist,' that originated from the documentary 'Petites/The End of Innocence’. In the film director Pauline Beugnies (Charleroi, °1982), explores how the Dutroux case affected the generation of children who grew up in Belgium in the 90’s. In the podcast ‘Monsters don't exist’, Ruth continues her search for the right words to talk about a sensitive topic that still lingers more than 25 years later: child abuse in Belgium.
Find Ruth on twitter via @ruthruthcairo
