Supported projects

BRUSSELS - Last summer, a fire breather suddenly appeared in Brussels. Photographer Kristof Vadino became intrigued by the mysterious entertainer and started following the man.

LEUVEN - One consequence of Leuven being an expensive city to live in is that many people are forced to move elsewhere. The City Monitor showed in 2017 that 15 percent of residents had plans to do so. No less than 56 percent cited financial reasons for this.

ALBANIA - Over the past 30 years, Albania has evolved at breakneck speed from an extreme communist dictatorship to an unbridled neoliberal democracy. This makes the country an interesting laboratory for contemporary social developments, such as migration, identity construction or gender and the social role of women. There is a lot to be said about this, because Albanian society has always been very patriarchal. Equality between men and women is hardly an issue.

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.

AUSTIN - Louise Van Assche is a documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Belgium and has Congolese roots. A year ago she moved to Austin, the capital of Texas. There she ended up in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests. It touched her personally and she decided to take to the streets to make a report.

BRUSSELS - This is the first article in a series on homelessness focusing on the Belgian capital city, where homelessness has more than doubled in ten years.

KABUL/KINSHASHA/JUBA - No Olympics this summer. But Elien did seek and feel the Olympic spirit: in Afghan women's football, wheelchair basketball in South Sudan and with nzozo players in Congo. These champions wouldn't have made it to the Olympics anyway, but the Olympic spirit is clearly present.

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.

BRUSSELS - We call them transmigrants. Also known as 'illegals'. Almost a swear word. Caroline van Gastel and Saar Van Eyck shed light on the harsh daily reality of a number of young women in Brussels. They come from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan where the regime oppresses the population and conflicts between communities are fought violently. The people can barely survive. They have to leave family and children behind in search of work. When they will see them again, nobody knows.

NEW YORK - The documentary 'Pride is Protest' offers an insight into the LGBTQ scene in New York, 50 years after Stonewall. Marieke Dermul and Filip Tielens went to New York for a week in June 2019 during the biggest Pride ever.

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.

DHAKA - The women in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka are fed up with it: they want to be able to go out on the streets without men bothering them. And so they organise their own transport through the impossibly chaotic, congested traffic: a motor-taxi with a woman at the wheel. Or they buy themselves a motorbike. First alone, as an exception, which provokes opposition and sometimes outright attacks. Now more and more numerous, they close ranks, form motorcycle clubs and lead demonstrations against violence against women.

TANGIER - Hirak protests broke out in northern Morocco three years ago. Following the terrible death of a fish seller, the Riffines were crying out for good education, health care, work, fair justice and the fight against corruption. But the regime hit hard, resulting in hundreds of arrests. The leaders of the non-violent Hirak movement were sentenced to twenty years in prison.

BRUSSELS - The five Flemish universities have made considerable progress in the area of gender equality in recent years. Yet at this rate it would take until 2050 before there is gender balance among academic staff. Only slightly more than one in four professors in Flanders is female - while there is no shortage of highly educated women.

BRUSSELS - While the authors were walking through Paris, they were both attracted to Château Rouge, an African neighbourhood immediately behind Montmartre. The positive sides but also the struggles of the neighborhood with gentrification and crime, reminded them of that other African neighbourhood, much closer to home: Matonge in Brussels. That was the start of a long search for the history, identity and future of black neighbourhoods in Europe.

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.

MAPUTO - In poverty-stricken Mozambique, young women are obliged to sell their bodies to wealthier or white men. A general wisdom with cliché status. But is such a simple analysis correct? What does international research say and what do the women themselves think about their sexual practices and social status? 

MOSCOW - Nostalgia or Revolution? Pieter Stockmans and photographer Mashid Mohadjerin travel through a number of important cities in European Russia to capture the revolutionary forces in 2017, 100 years after the Russian revolution of 1917.

BRUSSELS - Flemish women with talent and leadership qualities rarely reach the top. Journalist Tine Maenhout, together with ten inspiring women who hold top positions today, investigates why this is still the case and how things can be improved in the future. 

MOLENBEEK - the Distance Between Us’ takes its starting point in some audio cassettes artist and photographer Jan Locus received from a Moroccan family in Molenbeek a few years ago. Probably going back to the early 1980s, the cassettes contain an oral correspondence between families in Brussels and Morocco.

KAMPALA - Uganda is known as one of the world's worst countries to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). LGBT people risk cell for fourteen years and are victims of violence and discrimination. Ugandan church leaders call to lynch them, political leaders use them as lightning rods for the real problems.

HARDIN - Sitting Bull personifies the mystery of the Indians. One of the few whites who enjoyed Sitting Bull's confidence was Father Pieter-Jan De Smet, a Jesuit from Dendermonde (Belgium) who came to rescue the Indians. The savage story of these two men is overwhelming. Karl van den Broeck goes in search of the truth behind the myth.

LAMPEDUSA - The current events surrounding the refugee flow cannot be ignored by the media, conversations and our thoughts. At the same time, the reception of refugees is only the first phase. The integration, the second phase, is the common thread through this documentary about the refugees in Lampedusa.

GHENT - Since Bulgaria, the country with the lowest wages in Europe, joined the Union in 2007, around 15,000 Bulgarians have emigrated every year in search of a better future in the West. However, many end up on the margins of our society, camping in remote locations in and around cities.

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.

RAMALLAH - In Beyond the Wall, we follow two young Palestinians who face many restrictions on a daily basis, yet have decided to pursue their dreams despite everything. In Palestine, the worlds of sports and politics are closely linked.

NEUQUÉN - On the outskirts of Neuquén, at kilometre 7 of the Ruta-7, is the Zanon ceramic tile factory. This is where they do something very special. Ten years ago, Zanon's workers took over their factory. The expropriation was completed in January.

CAPE TOWN - The Cape Flats near Cape Town in South Africa are renowned for their large-scale violence. It is very difficult for young people to escape the violence, drugs and criminality.

RABAT - Random arrests, assault, raids, deportation to Algeria. The fate of many Sub-Saharan illegal and legal refugees in Morocco. Maithé Franco and Luca Putteman talked to victims and investigated what role Europe plays in this story.

PHILADELPHIA - As American voters prepare for the Presidential ballot, the economic inequality is the largest since the Great Depression. While the financial crisis left many people without a job and a lot of debt, a small majority is doing better than ever.