Roel Nollet is a Belgian freelance journalist and documentary maker.

After studying philosophy at Leuven University, he took a postgraduate course in journalism. He works as a news reporter for the Flemish public broadcaster VRT. His urge to tell stories has brought him to the Philippines, Senegal, the Carribean, Cairo and Nigeria. He often shoots and edits his own work, which has been broadcast on several international TV channels. He founded the ‘Redhorse collective‘, to enable collaborations between documentary makers.

Info

Name
Roel Nollet

Supported projects

Northern Lights, at the end of the tunnel

  • Migration

REYKJAVIK - "No one will end up on the streets," Thorir Hall says decidedly. He works for the Red Cross. "In Iceland, sleeping on the streets is not an option." It is a beautiful day today. Outside, it is freezing at minus four. In central Reykjavik, the aid agency has just opened a new emergency shelter. Last year, some 4,000 refugees applied for asylum in the country. It seems a ridiculously small number when compared to countries like Greece, Lebanon or even Belgium, but for Iceland it is 70 times more than a decade ago.

De guys from Vila Cruzeiro

  • Youth
  • Justice
  • Organised crime

RIO DE JANEIRO - Vila Cruzeiro is one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slums. People are living in poverty surrounded by a drug war. After far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office, shootings between police and traffickers are much more frequent. Violence in the neighbourhoods is only increasing.

Voetvolk

  • Armed conflict

STEPANAKERT - Nearly 30 years after Nagorno-Karabakh's declaration of independence, the region's simmering conflicts have flared up again. Nagorno-Karabakh is a country that does not officially exist. Still, it is fought over hard. Journalists Roel Nollet and Marijn Sillis travel to the Southern Caucasus, an ancient crossroads of cultures where the unrecognized states are a stone's throw from each other.

A Girl's Gaze

  • Equality
  • Environment

LILONGWE - Malawi is one of the countries hardest hit by climate change. Major floods and extreme drought mean that the harvest fails year after year. Girls are then easy prey for human traffickers.

Rebuilding Raqqah

  • Armed conflict
  • Terrorism

AR-RAQQAH - "Bomb after bomb after bomb." Dima is peeling potatoes in the kitchen when rockets are fired at her house. She loses a leg and two fingers. There are 7 dead. All citizens.

Inocencia asesinada

  • Armed conflict
  • Healthcare
  • Religion

EL SALVADOR - "When I woke up in the hospital, there were police officers around me. They said that I had killed my child." Maria Teresa De Rivera is 34 when she gets a miscarriage on the toilet. Due to strict abortion laws in her country, she is sentenced to 40 years in prison. She not only loses a child, but also her freedom. Under pressure from, among others, the Catholic Church, El Salvador has one of the strictest abortion laws in the world.

Puerta sin colores

  • Armed conflict
  • Human Rights
  • Politics

CARACAS - In "Puerta sin Colores", Marianne Cap, together with reporter Roel Nollet, goes to Venezuela. She worked there for a while in a home for boys with a difficult home situation. Four years later, she returns. 

Yovo Bonsoir

  • Human Rights

Yovo Bonsoir breaks with clichés about Africa. The white volunteer traveling in West African Benin is the guide. With the help of local colleagues, three young Flemish journalists investigate the true nature of "voluntourism", a popular holiday trend that combines tourism and volunteerism.

Worthy of the Crown

  • Culture

Yemi Oduwale, a flemish boy born in '86, has a Belgian mother and a Nigerian father. His grandfather is ill, and he wants Yemi to succeed him as a 'chief' in Nigeria. But Yemi is born and raised in Europe and doesn't know anything about the culture of the Yoruba, one of West-Africa's largest tribes. Besides, it's been more than 15 years ago since he was in Nigeria for the last time.