Supported projects

BRUSSELS – This investigation shows that local opposition to new reception centres for asylum seekers is often not a spontaneous neighbourhood protest. In 23 of the 26 Flemish municipalities where a new reception centre has opened since 2016, Vlaams Belang actively organised or supported the protest.

BIHAĆ / ZAGREB – Behind the political debates on return hubs and stricter procedures lies an underlying trend that is receiving less attention: the roll-out of a state-of-the-art technological surveillance system at our external borders.

SYRACUSE – The strictest European migration policy ever came into force in June. Through the Return Regulation, the EU is expanding its cooperation with third countries even further. NGOs have long been witnessing the human impact of externalisation policies, whereby border controls are outsourced and human rights are put under pressure.

BRUSSELS / SAMOS – How has violence at Europe’s external borders become normalised, and what institutional, political and psychological mechanisms perpetuate it?

BRUSSELS - The film Returnees follows migrants in Belgium who are preparing for voluntary return.

LEUVEN / LOOSDRECHT - Hooligans, online hate-mongers and orthodox Christians are rallying behind the call for ‘remigration’. For some figures and groups within the far right, the use of violence appears to be no obstacle.

SANTIAGO DE CHILE - On the American continent, the large northward migration flow is gradually drying up, due to Trump’s tough anti-immigration measures. But what about other migration flows in the region, between Latin American countries themselves?

ACCRA - In Destination Ghana, we follow four people from the African diaspora. Each has a different life story, but there is also something that connects them: none of them has ever set foot on the African continent

BRUSSELS / BIAŁOWIEŻA / LESBOS - Security agents abandoning people in the desert. Coast guards destroying boats and leaving those on board stranded on the open sea. Slave markets with refugees. Since the start of the “European refugee crisis”, violence at our external borders, and in distant countries that do the dirty work for us, has exploded.

AUSTIN - Living Under Ice tells the story of several ordinary Texans who are targeted by Trump's stricter immigration policy. Belgian filmmaker Louise Van Assche, who lives and works in Texas, teams up with co-director Kwinten Gernay to follow a number of families living on the border with Mexico. These often invisible but direct witnesses show how the Trump administration's measures are affecting the local community.

MECHELEN - Youth care center Juneco is a multicultural hub that houses 15 unaccompanied foreign minors aged 12 to 18 in Belgium. The young people grow up here without their families, creating close friendships.

CHELEM - Chelem, a small coastal town on the Gulf of Mexico, recently rebranded by Trump as the “Gulf of America”, is the stage for an unexpected reversal. Where once Mexicans journeyed north in search of a better life, today Americans are heading south, drawn by affordable healthcare, lower living costs, and the promise of a paradise filled with margaritas by the pool.

BIAŁOWIEŻA - Since March, Poland has imposed an asylum ban at its border with Belarus. Officially, there are exceptions for children, pregnant women and the sick, but in practice these are systematically ignored. Only 22 people have been able to apply for asylum since then. 

CAIRO - Cairo Encounters follows the lives of four Western European women who have emigrated to Cairo for love. The documentary explores the impact of their life choices on their Western identities and highlights their interactions with Egyptian society.

OXKUTZCAB - An estimated five million elderly parents in Mexico have been separated from their undocumented children living in the US for decades due to strict border policies, with little hope of being reunited.

CLUJ-NAPOCA / VALENI - As the European Union grows eastward, many children in Eastern Europe are left behind in their home countries while their parents go to Western Europe for better economic opportunities.

TANGIER - When fishmonger Mohsin Fikri is crushed in a rubbish truck, the Riffins have had enough. They demand that their region finally be developed after decades of backwardness: they want more jobs, better healthcare and, most importantly, recognition of their historic struggle against colonisation.

GAZA - Nadia AlHassanat was born in Gaza during the First Intifada. In her twenties, she fled her conservative family to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Today, she has been living in Belgium for eight years. The only person she stayed in touch with by phone is her older sister Fatma, who remains in Gaza with her two children.

BAKU - In September last year, violence came to a head in Nagorno Karabakh, the disputed area between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Just about all 120,000 Armenians were expelled from the region then. But the conflict has been going on for much longer.

BRUSSELS - In We, Roma there are 99 distinct stories of Roma. The themes are broad, from their own language to their own court, from Iftar to Mary worship, from prejudice to the affirmation of certain stereotypes.

CAÏRO - With the war in the Gaza Strip, negotiations on a billion-dollar deal between the European Union (EU) and Egypt gained momentum. In exchange for more financial support, the EU wants Egypt to keep its borders tightly guarded. The EU envisions a "golden age" of cooperation with Egypt. 

ROME - NGOs carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean have been at odds with the Italian government for years. SOS MEDITERRANNEE claims to perform its duty as mandated by international maritime law. Italy fights back with administrative sanctions.

AFRICA - While hatred and fear is sown in Europe about " floating negroes" and "repopulation," the African side of the immigration debate remains underexposed.

DAMASCUS - In No Man's Land, Middle East expert Willem Staes travels across Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. During nine trips between August 2021 and March 2023, he will see for himself how Syrian refugees find themselves in the most hopeless situation since the Syrian revolution in 2011.

ESSEN/HOOGSTRATEN/PUTTE - Belgian real estate agents are seeing more and more Dutch people moving across the border, in a desperate attempt to find an affordable house in the border region. What does that do to life in a border region. Apache and OC Spit traveled from Essen across Hoogstraten to Putte and spoke with owners.

MOL - Recent research shows that deep in our genes we are easterners. We are largely descended from steppe peoples who crossed into Europe five thousand years ago.

GITEGA / BELGRADO - The Burundi Balkan Route offered several thousand Burundians a way out of their homeland in crisis in 2022.

BAGDAD - Climate change is causing an exodus in Iraq of farmers whose land is drying up. They are moving with their water buffaloes or selling their livestock. The government does not know how to deal with climate migration, environmentalists are threatened and even kidnapped.

MELILLA - In June 2022, dozens of people were killed when a large group attempted to storm the border fence near the Spanish exclave of Melilla in Morocco. European leaders are particularly keen to stop migrants, and to that end, they are turning to Morocco, among others.

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."