Supported projects

ANTWERPEN - In 2017, Francis Njotea is rushed to hospital. He is in a coma for a week. When he wakes up, confused, he shares a secret with his son Raf. That contrary to what his children and ex-wife have always thought, he is not 63 but 73 years old. He later dismisses his claim as a hallucination. Francis’ children and ex-wife have no idea if what he said is true or not. It shows how little they know about his life story, a story that has been shrouded in mystery for as long as they can remember.

BRUSSELS - Joy and intimacy between family members and friends was an obvious thing before the corona crisis, but became a scarce commodity during it. Journalist Arkasha Keysers and photographer Aurélie Geurts captured the coming together of family and friends as soon as it was allowed again.

BUDAPEST - There she is, the granddaughter, in Budapest in front of her grandfather, who died suddenly five days ago. None of his three daughters, who all live in Flanders, travelled to Hungary for the funeral. From one moment to the next, the granddaughter, who loved her grandfather dearly, steps in to take charge.

Although narcissism is a popular theme in today's media, there is also much confusion about it. This series explores what narcissism is and how destructive the consequences can be for people in close contact with a narcissist. The witnesses are former partners or relatives of.

BRUSSELS - A pregnancy test that could lead to a miscarriage or a child with a birth defect. Abroad, the drug Duogynon is causing controversy to this day. This autumn, a British victims' organisation is suing the manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Schering (now Bayer).

AUGUSTA - What if you could measure a mother's future dreams for her children against the life that has become? In 1995 the photographer Elisabeth Broekaert travelled to Maine, in the north-east of the United States. Ronnie and Laurie Moulton opened their doors and let her make portraits that were then published in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard.

CHANG MAI - In a small village in Thailand, Pomm takes care of Europeans with Alzheimer’s. Separated from her children, she helps Elisabeth during the final stages of her life, as a new patient arrives from Switzerland.

BRUSSELS - One-third of the women in Belgium have a pension of less than 750 euros. That's little, but doesn't have to be a problem: if you are happily married, have a long career behind you and can put the money together as a couple. But for a whole group of women, this is not the case. The baby boomers are the first generation to divorce in such large numbers. Before that, couples used to stay together forever.

NEW DELHI - According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, India is the most dangerous country in the world for women. Nowhere more girls are sold as slaves. In melting Himalayan glaciers, prolonged drought, devastating storms and disappearing islands, human traffickers found new allies. Floods make millions of people homeless, displaced women are easy victims.

TBILISI - This article aims to map the thriving surrogacy business between Israel and Georgia, with a particular focus on the role of women in this increasingly global and more lucrative baby business.

BRUSSELS - They are everywhere. They don't understand. They're good-for-nothings. They're a danger, a plague, a disgrace. In The Indecent, Jan Antonissen goes in search of the people who are being looked at with contempt : the frightened white men and women, the racist vote of the populists, the white trash from our suburbs.

RAMALLAH - Palestinians better think twice before they marry. Many couples can't live together because their partner has another identity card.

BRUSSELS - Vulnerable Bulgarian women are coming to Belgium and the Netherlands to live with elderly people who prefer to stay at home rather than go to a nursing home. They will care for these elderly people during the last years or months of their lives. This research is a case study of the practices of Seniorcare24, a major provider of these services in the Low Countries, and the fate of the caregivers seconded by this company from Bulgaria.

NOUAKCHOTT - Officially, slavery does no longer exists in Mauritania, a barren desert country in West Africa. However, according to Anti-Slavery International, at least 4% of the Mauritanians are still owned by a master. They are born as slaves and have never known freedom. Not even in their minds.

BRUSSELS - Something's brewing in Brussels. Photographer Kurt Deruyter has been working for years on a project in the Brussels neighbourhoods of Molenbeek and Cureghem. Together with De Standaard-journaliste Sarah Vankersschaever, he has spent the past few months looking for a new perspective on these neighbourhoods, where chaos, entrepreneurship and cosmopolitanism dominate the streetscape.

BACAU - Georgiana Halmac, the eldest daughter in her family, turns fifteen this winter. She lives with her six siblings in a social housing flat on the outskirts of Bacau, Romania. Her mother Liliana, an economic migrant in Turin, will not return until the summer.

CHARLEROI - While Belgium is dying, Pascal Verbeken walks back to the era of Great Expectations. He makes a hike along the Grand Central Belge, the nineteenth-century private railway line that linked Wallonia with Flanders. An artery of triumphant Belgium, about 200 kilometres long.

BRUSSELS - Women who give up their child for adoption come up against a double taboo. Society frowns on it - what mother does such a thing? Meanwhile, they themselves struggle with their maternal feelings. Sometimes. But sometimes not. Shadow Mother brings their story: sometimes harrowing and painful, sometimes resigned and reconciling with it all.

BRUSSELS - A film by Arielle Sleutel & Dorothee van den Berghe. A documentary about ‘giving up your child‘.

KINSHASA - White Elephant is a documentary about the Central Post-Office and its employees in Kinshasa, DR Congo.

ROTTERDAM - A taboo-breaking story about the hidden problem of incest in immigrant families in the Netherlands.

KIGALI - Emma Dardenne, a widow living alone in Brussels (Belgium), was born in Rwanda in 1908 from a Rwandan mother and captain Heinrich von Bethe, a German officer on post in the German colony at that time. Despite the age of 95 and accompanied by her daughter Paulette and her grandson Manu she decides to revisit Rwanda to finally give them clear proof of her childhood stories.

OUAGADOUGOU - When freelance photographer Karl Deckers realised he had not received any Annual Progress Reports about his foster child anymore for the years 1999 and 2000, he looked through the reports from 1992 to 1998. To his surprise, each year's report seemed to be more or less a copy of that of the year before. Deckers decided to go and have a look at the situation himself.