Fabian Federl
 Writer / Foreign Reporter



Writing

Making the Planet Glisten With Gold

While Poisoning It in the Process

Ten years after an international treaty to ban mercury, the toxic metal continues to poison. The reason might have to do with your wedding ring.

Road to Ruin
Brazil’s plan to develop a lonesome track in the heart of the rainforest poses a threat the whole world may someday have to overcome.


Longlist "Best Reportage" at Nannen Award 2020
Evgeny Makarov's photography on shortlist of Earth Photo 2020


The story also appeared in audio:

The Deal

The Nepalese Sujan Khanal wants to live in Europe. Portugal makes him an offer: Now he will be picking raspberries for seven years - and receive the EU passport. About a business where only one side is sure to win.

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Munich (German)

Aftenposten A-Magasinet, Oslo (Norwegian)

Maailman Kuvalehti, Helsinki (Finnish)

Society, Paris (French)


1. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2021

Nominated for "Best Reportage" at Theodor-Wolff Award 2021

Finalist at German Journalist Award (DJP) 2021

The Last Drop

In a village in Portugal a war has broken out over water. On one side, small farmers, growing vegetables and raising cattle. On the other, multinational corporations producing berries for the northern European market. Here, a question is being debated that will be pressing for all of Europe in the near future: Once the rain stops, who gets the last drops of water?


Das Magazin, Zürich (German)


Nominated for "Best Science Reporting" at German Reporters Award 2022

The Fruits of Exploitation

Reportagen, Bern (German)


This reporting was supported by the Modern Slavery Unveiled grant from journalismfund.eu


1. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2024

This story also appeared in audio:


Fish to Fish food

Fish farming is supposed to save the oceans from overfishing. It works, for Europe. But in Senegal it leads to a paradox: The people lack fish, because it is fed to our fish.


This reporting was supported by the Otto Brenner Foundation

This story also appeared in audio:


A Brilliant Business

Transporting fish around the world just so that they can be used as aquarium ornaments in Europe, the US and Japan? Madness, say animal rights organizations. But in the Amazon basin, conservationists are fighting for more ornamental fish exports.

A report from the beginning of the supply chain.

The Good Shepherd

Climate change, monoculture and the grandiosity complex of a 20th century dictator are causing increasingly deadly forest fires in Portugal – and the comeback of an almost forgotten profession. Suddenly the country urgently needs shepherds who keep the flammable undergrowth short. Protecting their home from the flames.

Let it Burn!

Portugal, Australia, Brandenburg: forest fires are raging around the globe. In extreme cases they unleash unprecedented destructive power as "firestorms". So what is to be done? Spanish fire researcher Marc Castellnou says we should let them burn. And we need different forests. We need to live with fire. With his theses, he is fighting a lonely battle against the fire departments of the world.

GEO, Hamburg (German)


1. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2023





The Outermost Border

While Europe focusses on the Mediterranean, a whole other refugee crisis is happening along one of its most distant borders: On an island in the Indian Ocean.

Annabelle, Zürich (German)

Society, Paris (French)

Panorama Nyheter, Oslo (Norwegian)


This reporting was supported by the IJ4EU investigative journalism grant


Nominated for "Best Freelance Reporting" at German Reporters Award 2023


This story also appeared in audio:


Favela Ballet
Maysa Barbosa, 11 years old, is growing up in one of Rio's most dangerous neighborhoods. For seven years she has been planning her getaway. Through classical ballet.

The High

Dozens of farmers who used to produce papayas, avocados or passion fruit in the Algarve are reorganizing: They're growing cannabis. It's a bet on the legalization of marijuana throughout Europe.

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Munich (German)


2. Prize at the German-Portuguese Journalism Award 2022

Finalist at German Journalism Award (DJP) 2022





The Valley of Bikes

The bicycle industry in Portugal was long considered a thing of the past. For some years now, it has been experiencing a renaissance - and the pandemic helped revive it.

You've got Mail
Eliane Ramos never received a letter in her life because there was no map of her neighborhood: Rocinha, the largest favela in Brazil. So she drew one herself - and thus improved the lives of more than 100,000 people.
Tunnel Vision
Rio de Janeiro is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. While Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is reacting to the situation with gun violence, an engineer develops an app and counts on the help of peaceful citizens.
Is that the solution?

A Virus instead of Antibiotics

Every year, more people travel to Tbilisi, Georgia, to seek treatment with bacteriophages.

Reportagen, Bern (German)



Nominated for the Zurich Journalist Award 2023

The story also appeared in audio, read by Tim-Fabian Hoffmann:

Portugal's Seafood Mafia

How criminal gangs around Lisbon harvest and sell the toxic short-necked clam.


Nominated for "Best Reportage" at German Reporter Award 2018
Longlist "Best Reportage" at Nannen Award 2018


Out of Nowhere
Welket Bungué is the most prominent black actor of this German cinema year. He plays the main role in the Berlinale competition film "Berlin Alexanderplatz". It is about being a stranger, about arriving, about fate - and somehow also about Bungué's own story.
The Last Coconut Cracker

Brazil's coconut crackers take no more than the jungle can give them. So far, Brazilian law has protected their sustainable way of life. But now that Jair Bolsonaro is president, their home could become pasture.

Rio, Bravo

How a retired German dentist and a group of children have become a crucial part of Brazil’s fight against infectious disease

Annabelle, Zurich (German)

New Scientist, London (English)

Bistandsaktuelt, Oslo (Norwegian)

MO Magazine, Brussels (Flemish)


This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center


Nominated for the Medicine Journalism Award 2023 of Stiftung Gesundheit





A Crazy Story

 A psychologist develops a new therapy and accidentally becomes one of Spain's largest yogurt producers.
What Harms Nature Harms Humanity

Thomas E. Lovejoy has been conducting perhaps the largest ecological experiment in the world since 1979. The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project provides some of the most influential information about the rainforest’s ecosystem and the future of conservation. But the science can be hard to interpret, and the facts are useless if they fall on deaf ears. So Lovejoy brings us into the jungle to fall in love.

The Garbage, the City and the Sea
Poverty and violence are part of everyday life in the favelas of Rio. Some teenagers try to escape this life on the surfboard

 Wine from Nordeaux

Climate change is forcing winemakers to move their grapes to higher altitudes and further north.

Darwin vs. Oil Company

How do you protect a beach in Brazil? With Charles Darwin's notebooks. 

REPORTAGEN, Bern (German)




Back in form
Oscar Niemeyer's high-rise Edifício Copan tells of the downturn and upswing in São Paulo.
Bibi, the Dangerous
Fabiana Escobar was once Brazil's "coke baroness". Today she is a television star and turns violence into a show.
Soy for everyone
In a giant breeding experiment, gardeners and geneticists are looking for new types of soybean plants. They should thrive all over Germany.
Live on, Rio Doce

Three years ago, mine sludge poisoned an entire region in Brazil. Can a completely destroyed river be saved?

Audio

The Cure - Heilung aus dem Grab


Seven-Part Podcast Series, published by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Pola.Berlin (2022)


Every year, thousands of pilgrims visit the remote grave of Father McGirr, in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. They come looking for the Cure. The grave’s clay is said to be holy, it cures all ailments. Gerry Quinn, a microbiologist and son of Fermanagh, took a sample of the clay to his lab and found out: The clay really does have healing powers. 

In the priest’s grave might lie the solution to one of medicine’s most pressing problems: The fight against multi-resistant bacteria. 



Nominated for "Best Podcast" at German Reporter's Awards 2022

Selected Work for the International Features Conference AudioDocs 2023

Nominated for the Medicine Journalism Award 2023 of Stiftung Gesundheit




The outermost border

Radio documentary

published by ARD Radio (2023)


While Europe looks at the refugees in the Mediterranean, a barely noticed drama is taking place in the Indian Ocean: Thousands of people flee to the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean every year. The French government responds with summary deportations. The right to asylum and the European Convention on Human Rights are de facto nullified.




Floating Justice


Radio Documentary

published by the BBC World Service (2022)

and Deutschlandfunk (2022)


At the mouth of the Amazon, a steamboat brings justice to the villages on the riverbanks. 



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Fish to fish food


Radio Documentary

published by ARD Radio (2023)


Fish farming is supposed to save the oceans from overfishing. It works, for Europe. But in Senegal it leads to a paradox: The people lack fish, because it is fed to our fish.





Fabian Federl

I am Fabian Federl, a Franco-German freelance writer and foreign reporter for several European and North American magazines, newspapers and radio stations. I write and record in German and English and my work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Czech, Taiwanese and Korean.

My reporting is mostly, but not exclusively, from Latin America, Portugal and the Francophonie – in Europe, Africa and elsewhere.

I have received the German-Portuguese Journalism award twice, been nominated for the German Reporter Award and the Theodor-Wolff-Award, was a finalist at German Journalist Awards and on the Longlist of the Henri-Nannen Award

I am an alumnus of the Pulitzer Center, the European Journalism Center and the Robert Bosch Foundation. I have received grants from the Rainforest Journalism Fund, Real21-Medienfonds and the Investigative Journalism grant of the EU (IJ4EU). I have received scholarships from the Otto Brenner Foundation, the Franco-German Institute, the Reporter's Academy Berlin and the International Journalists Programme (IJP).

Before becoming a writer, I studied Linguistics and Latin American Studies in Tübingen, Porto Alegre and Berlin, and I have lived and worked in Madrid, Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

Currently I'm based in Rio de Janeiro and Berlin.

Feel free to contact me via Mail or Instagram.


Photo: Kristin Bethge


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