Supported projects

INDIA - Being transgender seems to be a fairly recent concept in Belgium and the Netherlands, but in India there has been a deep-rooted culture around the third sex for centuries.

UGANDA - In “Bewitched”, Daan Bauwens, Rien Bauwens and Yann Verbeke head to Uganda. A team of young Ugandan psychologists visits fishing villages on the shores of Lake Victoria. They are going to tell that there is such a thing as mental health and that it it can be helpful to talk about it. Because too often people with problems go to a witch.

BURUNDI - Bob Rugurika is the director of Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), the most popular independent radio station in Burundi. As an investigative journalist, he is also a forerunner in the fight for freedom of expression in his country, willing to risk his life to expose the truth. 

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.

BRUSSELS - Un pays plus beau qu’avant is a film about the Congo made in Brussels. The wanderings of Jean Simon, a small time business man, reveal the outlines of a microcosm of informal commerce within the Congolese diaspora.

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.

RWANDA - The Tour of Rwanda is the biggest cycling event on the african continent. In an eight day race it winds through all four provinces of Rwanda. The Tour has been won all four years by the host country, providing a platform to make an international name for Rwandan cyclists.

KABUL - During a visit to Dutch troops in Afghanistan in 2006, journalist Bette Dam discovered how little the military knew about their enemy. She left the military camp to investigate the feared taliban leader mullah Omar.

This story about European 'refugee management' starts in the summer of 1938 in the stately French spa town of Evian, at the first international summit about the refugee crisis in Europe. The number of Jews who tried to escape from the Nazi occupied territorium had exploded: reception places were needed urgently. All Western European countries were present at Evian and their arguments for not letting in the refugees were the same as now: the 'migrants' would not be compatible with national norms and values, would take jobs and houses and would be a threaten for societal cohesion. 

BELGIUM - Flanders and the Netherlands have a long tradition of silence about the disgraceful collaboration with the German occupiers during the Second World War. Twin brothers Hein and Toon Van den Brempt are determined to break that silence.

KAPELLE OP DEN BOS/KYMORE - Kapelle-op-den-Bos is where the filmmaker Daniel Lambo was born. Life was good there. Daniel's father worked in the local Eternit factory. The company was one of the world's biggest asbestos producers. Today, we know what happens when people make asbestos, and for many people, this is a problem that happened in the past. But the problem with asbestos is still there, as we see when we look at what Eternit was doing in other countries.

ACCRA - Filmmaker and actor Adams Mensah returns to Ghana, the country where he was born and spent half his life. "Ghana For You" is part of a larger project in which Adams explores the causes that encourage young Ghanaians to emigrate. Starting from his personal life story, he starts looking for possible explanations.

DAKAR - Following the example of some twenty German top companies, over the past two years, a handful of Belgian companies have also joined a pilot project on circular migration for highly educated African youth. They come to work in Belgium for a few months in a company that offers them a full-fledged job, build a network here and gain a lot of business experience, after which they return to their homeland to take the lead themselves.

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.

KAMPALA - Uganda is known as 'the best country in the world for refugees'. Everyone who arrives gets a piece of land and material to build a house.

BELGIUM - At the beginning of 2007, the Belgian FC Bruges launched plans for a new football stadium. A professional club derives a large part of the resources it needs from a modern and attractive stadium to maintain itself at the top in Belgium and to be able to participate somewhat internationally. But at the end of 2018, FC Bruges still does not know whether it can build. 

SYRIA - The caliphate is shrinking and ISIS is practically military defeated. But then what? Is ISIS a thing of the past? What remains of the terrorist group and what is there to expect? 

DUSHANBE - In October 2016, the authoritarian president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rachmon, pushed a pile of stones into the river Vachsh with a bulldozer. With this symbolic gesture he gave a new start to the construction of the Rogun dam which started in 1976. With 335 meters, Rogun has to become the highest dam in the world and the largest hydroelectric power plant in Central Asia. Quite a strong achievement for the poorest country in the region.

SYRIA - In his famous book 'Utopia', the English humanist Thomas More describes an ideal state. Ludo De Brabander travels around the 'Democratic Federation of Northern Syria' five centuries after publication. 

BARCELONA - Some 500 street vendors from Senegal, India and Pakistan work in the streets of Barcelona. Arkasha Keysers talked to them about fake sneakers, bad beer and the fear of a criminal record.

BELGIUM - The share of the pharmaceutical sector in the Belgian economy is large. According to the organization pharma.be in 2017, the sector employed 35,711 people and our country exported for a total value of 40.5 billion euros of medicines and vaccines worldwide, which is about 10% of Belgian exports. 

KINSHASHA - On the eve of postponed Congolese elections, two Congolese and two Belgian film-makers are working on a film about Kinshasa and its resistance to the legacies of colonialism. The four filmmakers want to tell a story together.

BRUSSELS - A six-part documentary series behind the scenes of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

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.

KALEMIE - In My Congo Bart Demyttenaere goes in search of the traces of three generations of Demyttenaere in his native country.

SENEGAL - In Senegal, 63 percent of the population is 25 years or younger. Every year that group gets bigger. Almost all of these young people want to go to Europe. They know the stories about the hellish journey through the desert, the assaults in Libya and the chance to drown in the Mediterranean. But that doesn't stop them.

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

IRKUTSK - Radio 1 reporter Ward Bogaert and Russia expert Johan de Boose travel during the first two weeks of the Football World Cup along the trans-Siberian railway line, in search of beautiful stories in the margins of the sporting event. Together they keep a diary...

MADRID - Fake news goes further than current news facts that are distorted. It is about inspiring stories and photos that will lead a life of their own. The penitent bullfighter is one of them. In the photo you can see a bull almost begging for its life, while the bullfighter is sitting aside, completely embarrassed.

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.