Photo: Participants of Reporting from the Future program in front of the European House of Culture and National Minorities in Sarajevo, April 2024.

The EEAS Stratcom Western Balkans Task Force partnered with renowned international correspondents, writers, filmmakers, and media specialists to engage and support young TV producers, journalists, documentarians, photographers, and other creatives from Ukraine through the “Reporting from the Future” program.

In April 2024, in collaboration with the WARM Foundation, Media Centre Sarajevo, and the German Kreisau- Initiative e.V. the Task Force organised a week-long program in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This initiative brought together over 35 young journalists, artists, producers, and other creatives from Ukraine with some of the most established Bosnian and international authors.

Engaging Ukrainian creatives

The program included professional exchanges, brainstorming sessions on reporting, mentoring, writing, and video-production workshops. Ukrainian participants had the opportunity to select their own work assignments and received support from local teams. The full-day schedule also featured evening talks where international and BiH award-winning authors shared their experiences and engaged in discussions with the young Ukrainian creatives.

Investigative journalist & war reporter

Among the distinguished mentors was Jon Lee Anderson, a prominent investigative journalist and war reporter and regular contributor to The New Yorker. Anderson shared his experiences from Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, El Salvador, Ireland, Lebanon, Iran, and the Middle East, as well as his profiles of political leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Augusto Pinochet.

Pulitzer prize winner

The participants also had a chance to learn from Rémy Ourdan, a French journalist, war correspondent for Le Monde, documentary filmmaker, as well as from a multi-award winning Bosnian photojournalist Damir Šagolj, a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the World Press Photo Award among others.

Film & literature prizewinners

The Ukrainian authors also engaged in a dynamic exchange with notable Bosnian figures, including Oscar and Golden Globe-winning filmmaker Danis Tanović, European literature award recipient writer and poet Faruk Šehić, whose works have been translated into 15 languages and published in 19 countries, and Aida Čerkez, the legendary wartime chief of the Associated Press (AP) Sarajevo bureau. Čerkez’s “Letter to Ukraine from Sarajevo”, written at the onset of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, captured the attention of major international media.

Some of the most engaging talks the Ukrainian creatives had was with a well-known Bosnian-American writer and professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University Aleksandar Hemon, who was born in Sarajevo to a father of an Ukrainian descent and a Bosnian Serb mother, and is lately most frequently mentioned for his co-writing of the script for the movie The Matrix Resurrections.

Countering disinformation

The Ukrainian journalists also discussed issues relating to foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) and the media perspective on Ukraine's EU accession process with Jasna Lambert, the Head of the Western Balkans Task Force at EEAS Stratcom.

On June 2, the "Reporting from the Future" project was presented at The International Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv. The works of the young Ukrainian authors are scheduled to be featured at the next edition of the WARM Festival in Sarajevo in July 2024, as well as at other affiliated festivals and networks.