Photo: Jennifer Moyes
Mélanie Gouby is an investigative journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker based in London. Her work strives to expose the systemic root causes underpinning violent conflict, inequalities, poverty and environmental destruction. She is currently at work on a multimedia project exploring the vital role played by the Congo Basin rainforest in the ecological balance of our planet, with the support of the National Geographic Society and the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).
Over the span of a decade-long career, Mélanie has investigated the diamond trade in the Central African Republic and pangolin trafficking in Cameroon, reported on the political crisis in Burundi, travelled with khat smugglers in Djibouti, and been smuggled herself behind army lines by activists in Sri Lanka. Her writing and documentary work has been published and broadcast by French and English-language media outlets ranging from Le Figaro to The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, National Geographic, Arte, France 24 and Vice, among others.
In 2021, her investigation of human rights violations perpetrated by the international response to the world’s second-deadliest Ebola outbreak, published as a long-form narrative series by Les Jours with support from the European Journalism Centre, won an Association of Health Care Journalists award in the Investigative category.
From 2011 to 2014, Mélanie lived in Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she covered the rise and fall of the M23 rebellion, as well as mining, business and development for the Associated Press. She led the investigation into a British oil company’s illegal activities in the Virunga National Park for the Oscar-nominated documentary Virunga (Netflix), winner of a Peabody and duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism, as well as a One World Media award for Corruption Reporting. In 2019, Mélanie was a nominee for the inaugural Mary Chirwa Award for Courageous Leadership. Her interest for the Great Lakes region began while covering the trials of Congolese rebel leaders at the International Criminal Court in The Hague from 2009 to 2011. Mélanie studied Politics and International Relations at the University College London.
CONTACT
e | melaniegouby@gmail.com
Mélanie Gouby signe un documentaire-portrait qui suit le jeune Abdulkader Fattouh, réfugié syrien et apprenti parfumeur à Versailles. Un voyage des sens où souvenirs et parfums se mêlent.