Reuters Launches First Documentary ‘Death in Darfur’ to Bridge Text-Video Journalism Gap
LONDON — Reuters has released its first documentary, “Death in Darfur,” marking a strategic push to integrate its investigative reporting with long-form video journalism and reach audiences less inclined toward text-based storytelling.
The 28-minute film, available on the Reuters website and YouTube, reconstructs paramilitary violence in the Sudanese city of al-Fashir using footage recorded by the perpetrators themselves. The documentary emerged after a Reuters team was among the first journalists on the ground at refugee camps in neighbouring Chad in October 2025 following the atrocities in al-Fashir. The team did not originally plan to make a documentary but pivoted as the opportunity became clear.
“This is a story that’s been invisible to the world, and the documentary actually showed us something that has been missing,” said Leela de Kretser, executive producer of the Reuters podcast division, which has recently moved toward video podcasts. “I don’t think you could have done that in any other form… that’s a value add to subscribers.”
The initiative reflects a broader organisational shift. Earlier this year, Reuters hired Suzanne Vanhooymissen as its first documentary investigations editor and Sarah Cahlan as visual investigations editor. Vanhooymissen, a former BBC Africa Eye producer and director, produced and directed “Death in Darfur.”
“We have within the investigations unit an incredible muscle when it comes to text-based investigations that get a lot of graphic treatment and beautiful animations online,” Vanhooymissen told Press Gazette. “And then we have within Reuters this massive video operation that has an incredible footprint, and it has access all over the world. The idea is that we now want to, with investigations, be able to bridge that gap.”
She added that previously, visual elements were often an afterthought: “It was never part of the conception of the investigation, or it wasn’t part of it from the outset, and that’s what we want to change.”
The film leveraged collaboration with Sudan Witness, which had already been gathering footage, and the Reuters Arabic team, which helped verify and translate material. Vanhooymissen said she hopes the wider Reuters team of 2,600 journalists will similarly spot opportunities where they have exclusive access or local knowledge. Since the film’s completion, she has received three or four internal pitches for similar projects.
“It’s a luxury to make it as long as it needs to be,” Vanhooymissen said of the flexible runtime planned for future documentaries.
Reuters is creating a dedicated playlist on its YouTube channel to build a recurring audience for documentary content. Currently, the channel is focused on Breaking News. “It will take some time for people to know that we’re there, and that that’s now a completely different product,” Vanhooymissen said. “But it’s worked for other broadcasters, so we’re hoping that slowly they’ll figure it out.”
While the documentary is also published on the Reuters website and its Arabic-language site, YouTube is seen as the primary platform for reaching new, younger audiences. “I would hope there is an appetite for depth, even among younger audiences,” Vanhooymissen said. “At the moment we haven’t got that longer-form way of pulling them in with a visual, and they are highly visual audiences.”
A trailer posted on TikTok has already garnered more than six million views. “It will hopefully drive that interest to the wider offering that we have, and just the amazing journalism that we do across the board,” Vanhooymissen added.
The move comes as Reuters continues to develop its digital subscription strategy. The agency has operated a metered paywall on its website since October 2024. Reuters Digital general manager Phil Andraos said this month the company is “happy where we are now, for sure” regarding subscriber numbers, though exact figures were not disclosed.
De Kretser noted that paying subscribers are drawn to “in-depth reporting – it is one of our strengths and our global reach, and this is the visual version of that.”
“Death in Darfur” signals the start of what Vanhooymissen describes as a snowball effect, with more video-based investigations expected to follow.
