Investigative Reporters Team With Filmmakers at First Floodlight Summit in Colombia

Scott Roxborough
·3 min read
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Investigative journalists specializing in crime and corruption reporting will pitch their stories to filmmakers and series at the first Floodlight Summit, which kicks off in Cartagena, Colombia, on Thursday, Nov. 30, and runs through Dec. 3.

Curated and organized by Oscar-nominated producer Philippa Kowarsky (The Gatekeepers, Sweet Mud) and Alesia Weston, the summit is set up as a pilot for a planned long-term alliance aimed at connecting international investigative journalists with the film and television industry.

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Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant, The Big Short and Bombshell writer Charles Randolph, Slow Horses and The Americans producer Graham Yost, Toni Erdmann producer Janine Jakowski and No Man’s Land director Danis Tanovic are among the confirmed industry attendees.

The Floodlight summit brings together the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Gabo Foundation, set up by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Marquez to promote quality journalism in South America.

“This is the kind of thing that would make my father crazy with excitement: the marriage of cinema and journalism, two of the great loves of his life,” said Rodrigo García, a Gabo Foundation board member and son of Gabriel García Marquez. “He would be equally thrilled to be on the pitching side and the listening side. This would be a dream come true for him.”

The Floodlight Summit will see leading investigative journalists pitch selected stories to filmmakers, with an eye to adapting investigations for film and TV. In a statement, the summit said its goal was “to amplify stories deserving of attention and expand their impact beyond the reach of more traditional journalistic outlets.”

“Investigative journalism is about revealing the truth and Floodlight will work with creative filmmakers to carve out more space to inform audiences,” said OCCRP co-founder and investigative journalist Paul Radu. “Together we will turn published and unpublished reporting into fiction films and television series that decipher, expose and diminish the criminal world around us. Floodlight is fiction in the public interest that will help fight the darkness.”

Out of 270 pitch proposals from the OCCRP and Gabo Foundation networks of investigative journalists, 14 were selected for the first Floodlight Summit, with 16 journalists from 11 countries pitching to industry participants, who were invited based on “their proven track record as exceptional storytellers whose work exemplifies impactful stories for global audiences.” To protect their safety, the names of the investigative journalists will first be announced during the event. OCCRP co-founders Drew Sullivan and Radu will help lead the summit. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Martha Mendoza and Walter Robinson will be keynote speakers.

“All of Gabriel García Márquez’s literary work is rooted in reality and reporting about the universe in which he grew up and lived: the Caribbean and Latin America,” says Gabo Foundation director and co-founder Jaime Abello Banfi. “Despite being more famous as a magical realism author with millions of readers around the world, Gabo worked many years as a journalist. Floodlight is inspired by the idea that audiovisual storytelling empowers journalistic investigations of public interest, globally expanding the impact of these stories through cinema, another of the great passions of our founder.”

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