Supported projects

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.

ST JOHN'S - Barbuda is paradise on earth: a small Caribbean island with beautiful beaches and clear waters full of fish and lobster. Worth noting: on Barbuda, land is not for sale. There is a system of communal land ownership. But cracks are appearing in that, now that property developers have their eye on the island.

COPSA MICA - It is December 1990, the days are short, dark and foggy. Beside the road in Copsa Mica, 2 men are slaughtering a pig. A Romanian Christmas tradition I later learn.

KAMPALA/DAR ES SALAAM - In 2006, British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves in the Albertine region in northwestern Uganda. In early 2022, Total signed an agreement with Tanzania and Uganda and Chinese state-owned CNOOC to begin construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The project will create the largest oil-heated pipeline with a length of 1,443 kilometers between Hoima in Uganda and Tanga in Tanzania, from where crude oil will be exported. But not without consequences.

SOBIBOR - After Auschwitz, Sobibor is the largest Dutch mass grave with more than 34,000 Dutch victims. Starting in 1942, more than 170,000 Jews were gassed here in a year and a half immediately upon arrival. Yet few people know about this death camp. After a successful prisoner uprising in October 1943, the Nazis closed Sobibor, erasing as many traces as possible.

LEUVEN - In the project "Does the Appeltans process bring an end to more than 20 years of slum landlords?" Arne Sonck investigated the power of slum landlords in Leuven. He brings to light how the Leuven landlord Appeltans was able to build a real estate empire by coloring outside the lines, and why the Leuven administration was able to watch this alone for a long time.

BRUSSELS - Journalist and writer Catherine Vuylsteke chronicled the life stories of Mar Maremoto, Ann Telnaes, Rachita Taneja, Doaa El-Adl, Victoria Lomasko and Amany Al-Ali, six women cartoonists from Mexico, the U.S., India, Egypt, Russia and Syria to whom the documentary series Draw for Change, recently awarded at Cannes, is dedicated.

KIEV - Foreign journalists report plenty about the war in Ukraine, and that is dangerous enough. But they're helped by local journalists, "fixers," and they can't just avoid the situation in their country. What does that nonstop work do to these people?

NINOVE - "Marginal triangle," "wing-west for the extreme right," "cultural breakdown strip against the language border. For those who don't live there, it's easy to brush off the Dender region. But how do the residents themselves actually see it?

Low Countries - In Flanders, we now speak Dutch. But that was not always the case. Less than a century ago, most people spoke their local dialect and the upper social class spoke Flemish-colored General Dutch or French.