Pieter-Jan De Pue

Pieter-Jan De Pue, is an independent filmmaker and graduated from the film academy RITS in Brussels in 2006. From 2007 on he started directing his first docu/fiction film The Land of the Enlightened (2016). In view of his debut project he has been travelling for long periods of time to Afghanistan, photographing the country and its people for organizations such as the International Red Cross, Caritas International, UN and international demining organizations. The Land of the Enlightened premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography. The film continued to win several other awards, such as the Phoenix Award at the Cologne Film Festival, the Audience Awards and Professional Achievement Award at Tarkovsky Film Festival, Anonimul Film festival, Olympia Film festival and Costa Rica International Film Festival; the Special Jury Award at Documenta Madrid, Artistic Vision Award at DocAviv. Pieter-Jan is working his second long feature film Two Poachers, a story about two brothers going to war in Eastern Ukraine (in pre-production).