Home>Pierre Flecheux, winner of the Dominique Baudis Award 2023
11.01.2024
Pierre Flecheux, winner of the Dominique Baudis Award 2023
Pierre Flecheux, a Master 2 student at the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, in the stream Social Policy and Social Innovation, won the Dominique Baudis Award at the end of 2023 for his documentary "Jamais trop TAAR", which he shot in Senegal during his gap year.
You won the Dominique Baudis Award at the end of November. Could you tell us a bit about this prize?
It's an honour for me to receive this award. Dominique Baudis was not only a television personality and a great journalist, he also devoted his life to others through his commitments and his work as Human Rights Defender. I see this award as the culmination of a rich academic career that I wanted to put at the service of social action. In 2019, my Civic Learning Programme in Sicily at an integration centre for asylum seekers marked a turning point in my life. It was there that I filmed my very first documentary, Discovering the reality of immigration, which was posted on YouTube at the time. Four years later, it's quite incredible to be rewarded by ARCOM and the French Human Rights Defender for a documentary that once again deals with migration issues. After Sicily, I had promised myself that I would go to the departure zones in West Africa, and now I have, and this award makes the story even sweeter.
You made your video during your gap year in Senegal. Could you tell us what it's about and why you chose this subject?
In Senegal, I became one of the country's most followed TikTokeurs in just a few months (600,000 subscribers), but my content sometimes cultivated the image of an Africa that dances and sings. The algorithm favours entertaining or controversial videos that generate engagement; it's very difficult to tackle in-depth subjects. When I received the call for entries for the Dominique Baudis Prize, I thought it was the ideal opportunity to propose a new format, closer to journalism. So I chose to document the career of my friend Faraba Cissokho because it was the ideal way of covering a number of social issues in such a short space of time. Faraba is a former football player who, like many others, dreamed of playing for some of the biggest clubs in the world. Unfortunately, he fell victim to fake agents who push players into illegal immigration for enormous sums of money. So I used football as a medium to showcase the problems faced by young people who, although out of breath, are remarkably resilient. Faraba is proof of this, as he has managed to bounce back by creating TAAR, his own brand of responsible clothing.
What are your plans following this award?
For the future, I'd like to continue highlighting committed profiles like Faraba's. I think that audio-visual media and social networks are now essential tools for promoting my projects, but also for campaigning and raising awareness. On a more personal level, I'm going to continue working with Faraba to help disadvantaged children in Senegal, in particular through the Mbegté association that we're going to declare in 2024. I'd also like to help Fabara continue her training in France, certainly at the luxury Textile d'Avenir workshop in Reims. I hope that the French authorities, some sponsors and the media will appreciate this story and this exemplary career. Whatever happens, I'd like to see this project go ahead - Faraba deserves it.
