Supported projects

BRUSSELS - In 2021, the European Union decided that it wants to end homelessness by 2030. Belgium also signed up to this goal. During the Belgian Presidency of the European Council at the beginning of last year, our country organised a conference in Brussels entitled “Towards zero homelessness, only six years left to succeed”.

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.

BEIRUT - Jado is a trans woman from Beirut. A prominent figure and a motherly presence in the local LGBTQIA+ community, she is an inspiration to many. Like many others, she has to fight every day just to be herself and survive.

WARSAW/AMSTERDAM/ANTWERP - Europe’s growing labour shortages in sectors like agriculture, logistics, transport, and hospitality are increasingly being filled by a new and highly vulnerable group – migrant workers from Central Asia. Many travel via Poland and end up, through opaque and exploitative channels, in vulnerable situations in the Netherlands and Belgium. 

SREBRENICA – The women of Srebrenica have spent 30 years searching through mass graves, holding fragments of bone up to the light, hoping to recognise the remains of sons, husbands and fathers who never came home.

AMSTERDAM - What images are associated with fertility, masculinity and fatherhood in society? In 'Mannen die zwijgen' (Men Who Remain Silent), Tomas Vanheste explores the stigma attached to male fertility issues, examining possible causes and treatments.

BRUSSELS - This book features donor families of today. What is their story? How did they choose a donor? With what words do they talk about this at the kitchen table? And what reactions do they get from those around them? Children also have their say in this book. What are their needs, questions or wishes regarding their genesis?

AMSTERDAM / BRUSSELS - Gay & Grey is a documentary series by director Julia M. Free in a co-production with VRT Canvas and DeMensen. The series follows the daily lives of senior lesbian couples, aged 70 and above, whose relationships have stood the test of time.

GHENT - Poverty is not just a matter of not having enough money. Poverty affects every aspect of your life. By highlighting people's problems from different points of view, Michelle Ginée in Poor in Rich Flanders goes in search of answers.

AUSTIN - When a Belgian filmmaker moves to Texas and becomes a mother, she is confronted with a reality barely comprehensible in Europe: preschoolers trained to keep quiet in a dark closet, schools deploying armed teachers and children crawling behind their school desks with an escape plan in mind.

BRUSSELS - One in five Belgian women decides to terminate her pregnancy. When terminating a pregnancy is seen as an act of care, new conversations can begin. Care for yourself, care for a partner or care for future choices. 

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.

COBQUECURA - 4.3 babies are born every second in the world. For a woman, childbirth is one of the most profound physical and emotional events in her life. Yet childbirth, like the female body in general, remains undervalued and under-researched.

ANTWERPEN - Valère, Veerle Duflou's partner, chose to donate his body to science. Ten years after his death, Veerle wants to know what happens to those bodies. She goes to the Antwerp University anatomy lab and follows the people to whom these bodies end up.

SOFIA/BUDAPEST - When people think of adoption, they think of poor countries in the global south. However, Flanders and the Netherlands adopt children from other European countries, such as Bulgaria and Hungary. This cross-border investigation shows that Roma children in these countries are discriminated against and end up in the adoption system due to stigma, poverty and a lack of support for families.

KABUL - In the remote mountains of central Afghanistan, a Hazara family embarks on a quest for truth and justice after their daughter Zahra mysteriously dies at Kabul University.

BHOPAL - Rural regions in India suffer a high suicide rate among farmers.

BRUSSELS - First and foremost, Under the Surface is a portrait of Anneke, a young woman of 33 with ASD who wants to live an independent life and escapes into a fantasy world.

TOKIO - In Japan, when people disappear overnight because of social pressure, financial, domestic or mental problems, they call it jōhatsu. Literally, it means evaporation. This phenomenon is not recognised in Japan, so it remains under the radar. Robbe Van der Vloet and Arend Bucher travelled to Japan to investigate jōhatsu.

BRUGGE - In Europe, children sometimes end up in prison. Not because they have done something wrong, but because they are the (unborn) child of a convicted, accused or interned woman. Bruges prison even has a special ward where young children can live with their imprisoned mothers.

BRUSSELS – ‘Once upon a time there was a man...’ Thus begins the story I was told as a little girl. In the podcast ‘Monsters don’t exist’ I revisit that story together with my contemporaries who grew up in 1990s turbulent Belgium, just like me. While we were busy with homework and playing in the streets, unsettling images and news reports seeped into our young lives and reshaped our understanding of the world forever.

BRUSSELS - Experienced staff are being fired, volunteers are dropping out and losses are piling up. Meanwhile, external consultants earn up to €20,000 a month. What is going on at Action Damien?

CAÏRO - Those who hoped the 2011 Egyptian revolution would dramatically improve women's lives are being disappointed. More than a decade later, calls for equal rights and opportunities are ringing louder than ever. Social media are once again an ideal sounding board for emancipatory ideas. And the regime? As ever, it reacts defensively. Whoever does not go along with the official discourse on women's rights is gagged.'

TEHERAN - The Islamic Republic regime in Iran has been oppressing its people for more than 40 years. In response to this repression and suffocation, the popular uprising of ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ is a powerful ‘no’.

BRUSSELS - Wout Van der Steen is an 8-year-old deaf boy from Wuustwezel. His parents are happy to let him go to a mainstream school, where he is entitled to an interpreter of Flemish Sign Language. This interpreter translates everything, both what the teacher says and what his classmates say. 

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.