Reports From Abroad

Our alumni will travel the world for a scoop. Meet the foreign correspondents, filmmakers and producers telling stories from India, Colombia, Israel and elsewhere.

UNDERGROUND RADIO

Goa, India

Libia Lobo Sardesai sits in a chair, holding a packet of papers and pointing to the pages as she speaks to the camera. She is wearing a red long-sleeve top and red necklace. In the background there is a bookshelf, a table and chairs and decorations hanging on the walls.

A senior video producer for the BBC, Nikita Mandhani ’16 MS directed, produced and edited a short documentary on Goa, a state on India’s western coast. Now a popular tourist spot, Goa spent more than four centuries under Portugal’s rule before India ousted Portuguese forces on Dec. 19, 1961. “The fight for Goa’s freedom picked up momentum after India won its independence in 1947,” says Mandhani, who is based in New Delhi, India. For this film, she interviewed Libia Lobo Sardesai (pictured), who “saw Goa’s freedom struggle up close.” Sardesai started an underground radio station with her late husband, Vaman Sardesai, in a dense forest on Goa’s northern border in 1955, a time when media censorship and propaganda were rampant in the Portuguese colony. The station’s broadcasts boosted morale and exposed the Portuguese troops’ oppressive actions. “The film highlights a history that’s so important but is rarely talked about,” Mandhani says.

RETURNING HOME

San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia

A group of people in silhouette walk past a tree at sunset, followed by two people on horses. — Credit: Sebastián Pinzón Silva ’17 MFA

Former Northwestern School of Communication classmates Nevo Shinaar ’17 MFA and Sebastián Pinzón Silva ’17 MFA worked together on La Bonga, a 2023 documentary about a community of Afro-Colombians who were forcibly removed from their original settlement 20 years prior, due to a civil war. Co-directed by Silva and co-produced by Shinaar, the film follows the group into the jungle of San Basilio de Palenque, where they rediscover their abandoned village and celebrate one of their important holiday festivals. Silva began working on La Bonga after exploring the topic in his MFA thesis film, Palenque.

ENTERING A WAR ZONE

Tel Aviv, Israel

Josh Lederman stands in a desert landscape in Gaza. He is wearing a blue denim shirt, black pants, and a black bulletproof vest labeled ‘PRESS’ on the front.

NBC News foreign correspondent Josh Lederman ’11 MS (above) has been covering the Israel-Hamas war, interviewing survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack and documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Lederman traveled into the Gaza Strip with Israeli troops. In east Jerusalem, he reported from a hospital where children from Gaza being treated for cancer were stranded when the war broke out. In Arab towns in central Israel, Lederman interviewed Arab-Israelis who say they have experienced a crackdown on free speech.

KINDERGARTEN, INTERRUPTED

Kharkiv, Ukraine

Four children and one adult woman sit in a row on a bench along an interior wall. A fifth child stands in front of a microphone, appearing to speak or perform, while a woman with a camera crouches in the foreground, possibly capturing the event.

NPR correspondent Elissa Nadworny ’14 MS spent eight months investigating what happened to Ukrainian kindergarteners whose school was heavily damaged by Russian shelling in August 2022. Nadworny and her team traveled across Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. to spend time with the 27 children, their families and their teacher. In a feature story and on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Nadworny showcased the ways the children are processing trauma and loss and how their families are helping them rebuild their lives in a new home.

A PROFESSOR ON TRIAL

Paris

Dana Ballout, who is wearing a black turtleneck and white pants, sits in front of a desk in a decorated office, next to a video camera. Across from her is Hassan Diab, who wears a gray button-down and sits behind the desk with his hands clasped.

Award-winning Los Angeles–based filmmaker and audio journalist Dana Ballout ’13 MS (above, right) attempts to unravel a decades-old whodunit in The Copernic Affair. Coming soon, the podcast series follows the case against Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor who was who accused of involvement in the 1980 bombing of Paris’ Rue Copernic synagogue. In 2023 a French court tried him in absentia and found him guilty, sentencing him to life in prison. Diab maintains his innocence but faces possible extradition from Canada to France. “My co-host, Alex Atack, and I [both] grew up in the Middle East,” says Ballout, who is from Lebanon, “and we share a deep-rooted connection to the region.” Her upcoming projects examine Lebanon’s financial collapse and the trial of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

GIANNIS’ JOURNEY

Athens, Greece

Producer Hannah Beir ’22 MS made three trips to Greece for Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, a 2024 documentary on Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo (above, right). Beir documents his life trajectory, beginning as the son of Nigerian immigrants in Greece to becoming a two-time MVP and world champion in the NBA. “His family has never publicly spoken about their story,” she says. “It felt important to allow them to speak their truth.” Beir, who recently worked with WNBA basketball star Caitlin Clark on Full Court Press and on AYENDA, a 2023 documentary about a displaced Afghan girls soccer team, sees sports as an opportunity to discuss cultural and political issues. “We talk about this before any project: What is the deeper story here? Sports are relatable and unifying, so it’s a great avenue to talk about larger issues.”

COASTAL WAYS OF LIVING

Salvador, Brazil

In Black Pearl, independent filmmaker and cinematographer Iyabo Kwayana ’17 MFA explores rituals of communion and congregation among coastal communities across the globe, including Louisiana and the Gullah coast between South Carolina and Georgia, as well as Salvador, Brazil. The in-progress film is “a love letter to coastal people,” says Kwayana. “All three regions are united by varying iterations of a common water-based system of caretaking, knowledge and spirituality first practiced in West Africa. I’m interested in how those rituals get threatened by climate gentrification and climate change.” Kwayana is co-producing Black Pearl with Sebastián Pinzón Silva ’17 MFA, a classmate from Northwestern.

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