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.

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”.

ANTWERP - Hugo Schiltz is the most important Flemish nationalist of the 20th century. He grew up in a strict Catholic and radical Flemish nationalist environment and joined the collaboration at the age of fourteen. He quickly overcame the trauma of that collaboration and his imprisonment, after which he became the architect of federal Belgium.

OUDSBERGEN / YELLOWSTONE - After a century of absence, the wolf is once again prowling our landscapes. Its return is welcomed in forests and meadows, but resistance is growing on farms and in parliaments.

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. 

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.

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.

BRUSSELS - Our meat consumption must go down, and to facilitate this, an army of producers is ready with alternatives. Some found inspiration in age-old recipes, others are reinventing meat altogether.

BUENOS AIRES - For decades, Argentinians have been plagued by monstrous price increases. With a solemn promise to put an end to hyperinflation, Javier Milei came to power at the end of 2023. Since then, Milei has been dismantling the state step by step, part of his libertarian agenda that is increasingly dividing the nation.

BRUSSELS - Life is impossible without music blends music, memory and humanity through the true stories of pianist Kosta Jakić and Simon Gronowski, a Holocaust survivor.

MARIUPOL - As Russian forces close in on the city, thousands of Mariupol's inhabitants are taking shelter in the cellars of the Azov steelworks. This is a reconstruction of the 82 dark days of recent Ukrainian history, during which courage, creativity and tolerance helped them to survive.

BRUSSELS - Which is more sustainable: a woollen jumper or a polyester one? The European Union proposes a universal calculation to find out. The answer may surprise you: although polyester is a synthetic fibre made from fossil fuels, it is not the plastic fibre but the natural fibre that turns out to be worse for the environment.

BRUSSELS/DUBLIN - For decades, European consumers have been warned about the dangers of smoking. Yet wine and beer still carry no clear health warnings, even though alcohol is one of the leading preventable causes of cancer. This investigation reveals how the European alcohol industry has fought to keep it that way.

ANTWERP/BRUSSELS - To understand how citizens weigh ethics against the law, Suzanne Roes decided to conduct research into criminalised movements above and below ground.

DEURNE - Between 2014 and 2024, Antwerp Airport received at least €116.1 million in Flemish and federal subsidies, on top of €70.3 million that the Flemish government invested in infrastructure. Yet Antwerp Airport has been operating at a loss for years.

NEW YORK CITY - The West may not have fully realised it, but the United Nations is undergoing a revival. Not that everything will remain the same, because Beijing seems to be finding enough allies to change the organisation from within. 

BRUSSELS - A maze of European subsidy rules has created a lucrative niche: grant consultants. These consultancy firms earn substantial sums by assisting researchers with their subsidy applications. This raises a fundamental question: does current research policy steer science too much towards competition and market value, at the expense of an open, societal approach to research?

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. 

MATAM - As a nine-year-old girl born with exceptional flexibility, Fanta took her first steps in the Amoukanama circus group, which consisted of boys. Even then, Fanta dreamed of a professional career as an acrobat. However, her family did not approve. Five years later, Fanta still cherishes the same dream and faces the same practical family objections.

ANTWERP / RIEME - No one knows how many harmful substances are emitted from the chimneys of Flemish factories. However, the emissions of the limited group of “Substances of Very High Concern” reported by Flemish companies are almost twice as high as those reported by companies in the Netherlands. 

# Financial support
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Grants homepage

Fonds Pascal Decroos

22 januari 2026 - 13u00
€ 270.000

FPD Lage Landen

TBC
€ 80.000

FPD Wetenschap

TBC
€80.000

News

GIJC27

The next Global Investigative Journalism Conference will take place in the Netherlands

2025-11-25

AMSTERDAM - We’re thrilled to announce that GIJN and Dutch member Vereniging van Onderzoeksjournalisten (VVOJ), in partnership with Free Press Unlimited and the European Journalism Centre (EJC), will bring the world’s leading gathering of investigative journalists to the heart of Europe

From war correspondent to system critic: A journalistic metamorphosis

2025-10-21

BRUSSELS - In her doctoral research, Bette Dam investigates how a century of journalistic habits has contributed to a persistent imbalance in news reporting. She combines her experiences in Kabul with academic research to highlight this development. At the same time, she explores how these insights can lead to the creation of a new journalistic system. 

In Memoriam: Guido Convents (1956-2025)

2025-09-15

LEUVEN - The world of film history has lost one of its most dedicated and pioneering scholars with the passing of Guido Convents on September 11, 2025. A Belgian historian and anthropologist whose work illuminated corners of cinema history too often left in shadow, Convents devoted his life to documenting and preserving the film heritage of Africa, with particular emphasis on the colonial and post-colonial experiences of Portuguese-speaking nations and the former Belgian territories.