Ruud Elmendorp

Finalist, the Rory Peck Award for Hard News 2007

Dutch
Shot: DR Congo, July 2006  
Self funded
Broadcast by de Volkskrant  

This film is about a rare meeting with Joseph Kony, the feared leader of the Ugandan rebel movement, Lord's Resistance Army, who emerges from his hide-out in the jungle in Northern Congo for peace talks and a news conference. He is guarded by his child soldiers who are blamed for maiming opponents in a twenty-year campaign of terror. Kony himself is accused of abducting the children. Along with four of his most senior commanders, Kony is now top of the International Criminal Courts warrant list.
The judges said: “This is a well-constructed, accurate piece of journalism which manages to convey a real sense of danger – of menace…concentrating on the faces of the child soldiers in a sequence of slow shots shows great subtlety and adds to the chilling atmosphere of the bizarre news conference.”

Biography
Ruud Elmendorp is a Dutch television correspondent in Africa, working for various organisations including RTL Netherlands, Voice of America, Reuters, and several streaming media on the Internet, like Rocketboom. His television career began in regional and national television in the Netherlands in 1992. He became freelance in 2001 spending most time since in Africa. He works alone, researching, shooting, scripting, editing and voicing all his work himself. His report on the Uganda rebel leader Joseph Kony won the 2006 International Award at the Videoreporter Festival in Berlin.