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Eastern Sudan · 2024 / Season 6 · In Production

The people who report the wars
mainstream networks won't.

A small independent newsroom. Six seasons on the ground. Forty-seven countries. One refusal to look away.

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A Statement of Intent

What does the camera see when no crew is sent?

For more than a decade, the world's largest news organizations have thinned out their foreign bureaux, retired their conflict correspondents, and consolidated coverage into a handful of capital cities. The result is a media landscape in which entire wars unfold without a single credentialed journalist present, where protest movements rise and fall in silence, and where political decisions worth billions are made without scrutiny from anyone who has stood on the ground.

The Frontline Movie Project was founded to fill that gap — not as a counter-narrative, not as advocacy, but as a stubborn insistence on presence. We go where the press pool doesn't. We stay after the cable trucks roll out. We film the moments that don't trend.

— Maren Vasquez & Idris Okonkwo, Co-Founders

The Founders

A war correspondent and a bureau chief. One newsroom. Forty-seven countries.

The series was founded in 2018 by two journalists who had each spent fifteen years reporting inside the stories the industry had stopped covering — and decided to keep going anyway.

Portrait of co-founder Maren Vasquez in field reporting gear

Co-Founder · Executive Producer

Maren Vasquez

Emmy-nominated war correspondent (2009, Outstanding Investigative Journalism). Fifteen years embedded in conflicts across the Levant, the Horn of Africa, and the Andean corridor. Maren led the camera crew that secured the first independent embedded access inside the 2022–2024 Eastern European theater, granted by three separate national press pools.

Specialty
Combat-zone cinematography & source verification
Awards
Emmy Nominee (2009) · Peabody Winner (2023)
Portrait of co-founder Idris Okonkwo at his field desk

Co-Founder · Editorial Director

Idris Okonkwo

Former BBC Bureau Chief, Nairobi. Twenty years of broadcast editorial leadership across East and West Africa, including coverage of the Sahel insurgency that earned a 2024 duPont-Columbia Award finalist nomination for the series. Idris oversees editorial standards, source verification, and the distribution partnerships that carry each episode into 89 countries.

Specialty
Editorial standards & international distribution
Awards
duPont-Columbia Finalist (2024)

The Production Machine

Behind every episode sits a permanent staff of 28 full-time editors, producers, verifiers, and archivists, supported by a rotating roster of 60+ field correspondents operating under hostile-environment insurance and rigorous source-verification protocols.

Operations

Two cities. Two production realities. One newsroom.

From a converted warehouse in Brooklyn and a regional production hub in Nairobi, the series coordinates field operations across six continents — and never lets more than twelve hours pass without a desk staffed and reachable.

Inside the Brooklyn editorial headquarters at Atlantic Avenue

New York

Brooklyn Headquarters

321 Atlantic Avenue, Suite 4B
Brooklyn, NY 11201 · USA

The flagship editorial headquarters, housing post-production, the source-verification desk, the legal team that clears every minute of footage for distribution, and the partnerships office that works with Al Jazeera English, DW, ARTE, and our broadcast network of 89 countries.

  • Editorial
  • Post-Production
  • Source Verification
  • Distribution
The Nairobi regional production hub in East Africa

Nairobi

Regional Production Hub

Westlands, Nairobi
Kenya · East Africa

The regional production hub coordinates field operations across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes corridor. Equipment clears customs here, field crews are briefed and insured, and footage is uploaded through a hardened satellite link to Brooklyn within hours of capture.

  • Field Logistics
  • Equipment Depot
  • Regional Briefings
  • Satellite Uplink

The Dossier

Six seasons. Forty-seven countries. One independent newsroom.

A scannable record of what the project has actually shipped, where it has been seen, and what independent juries have said about it.

43

Episodes released across 6 seasons

38 hours of finished film · 2018 to present

47

Countries filmed in on location

Ukraine · Sudan · Myanmar · Lebanon · Haiti · Ecuador

1,800hrs

Source-verified archival footage released

Time-stamped, Creative Commons — open to the public

89

Countries reached via broadcast partners

Al Jazeera English · DW · ARTE · 14 subtitled languages

2023

Peabody Award Winner

"Voices from the Frontline" — Season 4, Episode 2

2024

duPont-Columbia Award Finalist

Coverage of the Sahel insurgency

2026

Featured in

The Guardian · Foreign Policy · Columbia Journalism Review

2025

2.4M viewers · 92% completion

Average per flagship episode across broadcast and YouTube

14,200

Individual crowdfunders across 3 rounds

$3.8M raised on Kickstarter and Patreon

187K

Newsletter subscribers — Dispatches

41% open rate · independent reader-funded

Pulitzer · Ford · RSF

Institutional grant partners

Pulitzer Center · Ford Foundation · Reporters Without Borders

The Next Front

The next front starts in your inbox.

Each week, the 187,000 subscribers of Dispatches from the Frontline receive the raw field notes our crews send back from active reporting — before the cameras cut, before the edits lock, before the episode airs. It is the closest thing to standing on the ground with us.

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No advertising. No sponsorship. Reader-funded since 2018.