Supported projects

BRUSSELS / AMSTERDAM - Ivo Van Hove has conquered the world. As the leader of the largest theater company in the Netherlands, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, he makes theater productions that are enthusiastically welcomed worldwide.

PORT MORESBY - Jimmy Hendrickx traveled to a remote tribe in Papua in the footsteps of the Belgian missionary Petrus Vertenten. He worked there about a hundred years ago and saved the tribe from extermination, for which he is still honored.

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.

TEHERAN - Sex before marriage is punishable by lashes and incarceration. Adultery even with the death penalty. And that is why promiscuous sexual behavior in Iran is the norm. Two journalists, with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund, made a captivating undercover report from the underbelly of Tehran.

PORTO-NOVO - Yovo Bonsoir breaks the clichés about Africa. The white volunteer travelling in the West African country of Benin is the guide. With the help of local colleagues, three young Flemish journalists investigate the true nature of "voluntourism", a popular holiday trend that combines tourism and volunteer work.

DRESDEN - During the Second World War just about every Nazi-leader had its own art collection. The hunger for art was enormous. Which paintings were brought from Belgium to Nazi Germany?

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.

KIGALI - In April 2015, it will be exactly 50 years ago that Ché Guevara celebrated his happy arrival in Congo. In December it will be exactly 50 years ago that he sadly retreated. Jérôme Sebasoni crossed Ché Guevara on his guerrilla and followed him all the way to Cuba.

OKEIGBO - Yemi Oduwale, a Flemish boy born in '86, has a Belgian mother and a Nigerian father. His grandfather is ill and wants Yemi to succeed him as 'chief' in Nigeria. But Yemi was born and raised in Europe and doesn't know anything about the culture of the Yoruba, one of the largest tribes in West Africa. What's more, it's been more than 15 years since he last visited Nigeria.

MALI -  In comic strips Timbuktu is the end of the world, and the Tuareg who live there have been attracting westerners for centuries. With minimal means they survive in the Sahara, heroically fighting the colonial occupation. Volkswagen named a car after them.

BRUSSELS - Europe is not doing well. At least, that is what we would say if we would talk about it at all. Because we rarely mention our continent, let alone discuss it in detail. Europe, that's what's going on above our heads. We don't care. Europe costs us too much and dictates too much.

PALERMO - Italy: it is not a neighbouring country and yet it often feels like it is. But how well do we know that country and its people? Couldn't our knowledge of Italy and the Italians, almost seventy years after they emigrated en masse to our country, reach a little further? 

CAIRO - In Egypt the aftermath of a bloody summer is still palpable. In the southern city of Minya, the blackened church spires contrast a group of demonstrators holding yellow balloons: Morsi supporters are demanding that their president rule once again.

SAMARINDA - About one third of the natural vegetation on the island of Borneo, one of the most biodiverse places in the world, was lost in the past thirty years. Through the decades, scientists and conservationists working on the island have grown a thick skin, and came to realize that reserves will not suffice to save the rainforest.

ANTWERP - School uniforms are common in elementary and middle schools in many countries. They symbolize class equality, quality, and structure. Photographer Annie van Gemert visited Belgium, where pupils still wear uniforms in many schools. From 2009 to 2013 she created probing (group) portraits of boys and girls in school uniforms. These photos led to a new publication, School Uniforms: Education in Flanders.

THE HAGUE - The Dutch philosopher Spinoza is 'in the air', interest in him recently increasing considerably. At the same time, however, The Netherlands seem to turn away from the freedom of expression and tolerance that are championed in his work.

BAGHDAD - Zelfa Madhloum went to Iraq to find Iraqis returning to their country after having emigrated. What is more, it was her first visit to her country of origin. Against everyone's advice, she decided to follow her destiny in Iraq. She immerses herself in the new, shocking world, gets to know other people her age and meets her family for the first time.

RAMALLAH - They are omnipresent in the West Bank and they look at you from walls, in bus shelters and on lampposts: the Palestinian martyrs. But what is the context of those decayed Palestinian martyr posters?

CAIRO - Late 2011, early 2012. While people are dying on Tahrir Square, four Belgian photographers go in search of personal stories in a metropolis of 20 million inhabitants where fault lines have suddenly been enlarged. This results in images that you don't see on TV or in the newspaper.

NEW YORK CITY - It's highly unusual. In October 2012, after years of friendly relations, Margot Vanderstraeten was able to get access to a small group of Antwerp modern-orthodox Jews who started a new life in New York – and don't want to leave. "I truly feel at home here. I can be truly Jewish here, too. And that is something that has never really been possible in Antwerp."

BRUSSELS - In spite of the efforts made by NGOs and the distribution of EU funds, Europe’s main minority is no better off than it was 10 years ago. Anno 2012 the significant proportion of Europe’s 12 million Roma live in deplorable conditions. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. Dutch journalist Hellen Kooijman reconstructed more than ten years of failed European policy. A lack of appropriate supervision in Brussels, the corruption of local leaders and the indifference of national governments are at the root of the problem.

CAIRO - Baharak Bashar was thirteen when she fled from Iran to Belgium with her mother. Away from the ayatollah's and their religious narrow-mindedness.

MAPUTO - To his great surprise, film journalist and historian Guido Convents was told by Portuguese journalists in 2006 that Mozambique had no significant film culture or production. Even within the Belgian film industry, nobody seemed to have any knowledge of Mozambican cinema.

WASHINGTON DC - 'De kleuren van Amerika' (The colours of America) provides an overview of American diversity in all of its forms. The multicultural society is not all sunshine and roses, but a work in progress, with beautiful and ugly sides, successes and failures.

AMMAN - Journalists Majd Khalifeh and Pieter Stockmans, and photographer Xander Stockmans travel across North Africa and the Middle East for 5 months in search of dreams of freedom and happiness of ordinary people, workers, doctors, activists, young people, imams, priests, professors, trade union leaders, journalists, politicians,... They let the people behind the revolutions speak and share their dreams with Europe.

SARAJEVO - In December 2009, for the first time in eighteen years, a direct train departed from Belgrade to Sarajevo, from the current Serbian to the Bosnian capital. In 1991, that connection had been suspended. President Tito's multinational Yugoslavia fell apart, and for four years a war raged between Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

BRUSSELS – For the first time, Lusobelgae sheds light on the Portuguese community in Brussels, from the first wave of migration in the 1960s (political and economic refugees fleeing the Salazar regime) to the present day. The community is divided between traditional labour migration and EU officials, and there is a young generation who want to break free from the closed community and engage with wider society.

BRUSSEL - ‘Facing Brussels’ is a photographic exploration of the city's incredible diversity. The project captures the many different people who make up Brussels, ranging from tourists and commuters to Eurocrats, homeless people, migrants and the local population.

BAMAKO - The river Niger, Mali's vein of life, is in danger. Photographer Raymond Dakoua shows the great economic, social, human and ecological importance of Africa's third longest river. 'Le Djoliba' means 'the river' in the Bambara language.

ANTWERP – Theatre director and journalist Michaël De Cock set out to explore his own city, seeking answers to a question that has been troubling him: just how divided is Antwerp?