User:Feellazy/Sotiris Danezis

Journalist and communications expert Sotiris Danezis gained recognition as a war correspondent and documentary filmmaker. He has been working as an expert on global topics for the television network OPEN, since October 2018. He contributes articles to Imerisia and Ethnos publications. He also founded Danezis Stories, an agency that provides strategic communication and content creation services to companies, organizations, foundations, public bodies, and private entities.

Biography
Sotiris Danezis was born and raised in Samos. He studied journalism at the University of the Arts London and then continued his studies with a masters degree in London College of Communication. Early on in his career he was writing and delivering news for private radio stations. After completing his studies he returned to Athens and began working at SKAI radio and television.

He established a career as a war correspondent and the creator of two well-liked documentary series on Greek television with historical, political, social, anthropological, and news topics: "War Zone,", which has 83 episodes including missions and filming in numerous nations, and "Orizontas,"   , which has 21 television documentaries shot primarily in Greece. The two shows were shown by the television network Mega Channel during prime time from 2003 to 2016, when the station's operations and the News Department were halted.

His documentaries received excellent reviews     from the media, who have been complimentary of both the expository journalistic investigation     and the quality of the product on the screen.

The documentaries that stood out are: "The Show" which was shot in remote North Korea, "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan", which was also broadcast in France  by Planete+ of the Canal Plus network, "Gaetano Grando: Born Mafioso", which features a portrait of the youngest executioner  in the history of the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra and "The End of Silence" which presents a revealing investigation into the sexual abuse scandals within the Roman Catholic Church  along with an exclusive  interview with the Irish songwriter Sinead O' Conor. The historical documentaries "Hitler's Bodyguard", "The Mystery of Pearl Harbor" and "The Test" which feature interviews with survivors of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, are also noteworthy. In addition, there is "Kursk" which discusses the tragedy of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, "Soldiers Without a Name" which features a leader of the hacker activists "Anonymous" and "The Reds" that examines the violent history of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and features a rare interview with Nuon Chea, often known as "Brother No. 2" and the deputy head of Pol Pot's dictatorship.

The documentaries from "Orizontas" series that stood out were "The Trapped", which depicts the drama of the thousands of refugees who were discovered in 2016 in Idomeni, Kilkis prefecture, "The Gambling Gene" which features unique testimonies and is shot inside a casino, and "Tango for a Vote" which examines corruption in Greece.Also the documentary "Born Second Times" with interviews of four people who met death and "cheated" it and "The Big Sale" which presents stories of the divestment of middle-class wealth during the years of financial crisis.

Journalistic course
He served as a news anchor and journalist for the SKAI TV station, which was renamed to Alpha TV in 1999, from the beginning of 1994 until the end of 1999.

He started working for Mega Channel as a journalist in January 2000. But, his next big step towards establishing himself in the field of research on global issues and audiovisual storytelling came three years later when he founded the monthly series of worldwide documentaries "War Zone". The characteristic way of presenting his stories continued in the series "Orizontas", which premiered in March of 2015.

During his career he has been in more than 80 countries around the world some of which are among the most volatile places on the planet, some of those countries include the isolated region of North Korea, while others are marked by political unrest and humanitarian crises. The countries span out from Nepal, Myanmar, Haiti, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Falklands Islands, as well as Japan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Iran, El Salvador, Colombia and has dealt with some of the most extreme climate conditions in places like the Amazon, the Sahara Desert and the extreme cold of the Alaska regions.

He covered numerous missions as a war correspondent, including the crisis and uprising caused by the collapse of pyramid schemes in Albania (1997), the NATO bombings in Kosovo (1999), the wars in Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003), where he stayed for 78 days despite the pressures for the departure of Greek journalists, documenting the fall of Baghdad and the regime of Saddam Hussein. He was the first Greek journalist to be integrated into an American army combat unit in 2006. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, while stationed at the 10th Mountain Division outpost, he was ambushed by the Taliban in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.

As the first Greek TV crew in 2011 to cover the civil war in Libya, he first reported the revolt and the events in Benghazi and then, he accompanied the anti-regime forces as they advanced towards the city of Sirte. During this mission he was endangered when a fighter plane targeted them along with his cameraman Aris Vitalis, his translator, and his guide. The bomb that followed exploded barely a few tens of metres away. He left for Athens twenty days later and travelled to Tripoli, the capital of Libya, where he reported the final hours of the Gaddafi dictatorship.

He covered the Crimean crisis      for Mega Channel in 2013 as well as the military clashes that broke out on the eastern  Ukrainian front a few months later.

He witnessed significant world events like the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA (2001), the deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia (2004), and the devastating Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in USA (2005). He also witnessed the terrorist attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016), the anti-G8 protests in Genoa (2001), and the earthquake in Haiti (2010), where eleven days after the earthquake, he discovered 22-year-old Wismond Exantus trapped in a building's rubble and helped to rescue him, making international headlines.

His first time as a newscaster was in 1996 on the SKAI TV station.

Later in his career when he was employed in Mega, he presented the nightly news and the international news in the station's newscast. He also reached the position of the main newscaster at 20.00 o'clock, a role for which he received positive comments and reviews.

He was given the task of starting the Greek website version of the popular American business magazine "FORTUNE", in 2013, creating FortuneGreece.com which he oversaw until 2015.

As the head of the International News Department and later as a global news commentator, he joined the Open Beyond news television station's journalistic team in October 2018. He produced the series "Europe for Me" with interviews of individuals and their expectations from a united Europe in May 2019, in the lead-up to the European elections. He also presented the educational show "The Hour of Europe" in May 2019.

He travelled to Kyiv and Mariupol in February 2022 to report on the Russian invasion and conflict in Ukraine. He was in the convoy of the Greek diplomatic mission with the last Greek journalists leaving Mariupol before the fighting broke out in the urban fabric. The convoy encountered Russian tanks in a blockade of the Russian army, and then came under fire from unidentified parties as it passed through the conflict zone in Ukraine.

Awards
He was awarded the Athanasios Botsis Foundation for the Promotion of Journalism Prize in 2008 from the President of the Hellenic Republic. He received the "Best Journalism Report" honour at the 2007 People TV Awards for his deployment to Afghanistan, which occurred five years after 9/11. ESIEA, the Municipality of Athens and Thessaloniki, Doctors of the World, have each given him honours.

Festival
In September 2007, his documentary "Ogruk Means Oil" was screened at Athens Film Festival, "Premier Nights ".

He was given a special tribute at the 10th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival "Images of the 21st Century" in March 2008, and ten "War Zone" documentaries were screened as part of the celebration. He also held the workshop titled "Guerilla Filming - Dangerous Missions" at the same time.

Two additional "War Zone" documentaries were chosen for the official programme of the same institution for the first time in 2007 and 2008.

On of the most important festivals of audiovisual programs in Europe, FIPA selected his documentary "Kanun - The Law of Honor and Blood" in the International Competition Section in 2009.

Two documentaries produced by Danezis Stories and directed by Sotiris Danezis debuted in the 25th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in 2023. The "Roofless Dreams" documentary, produced with the help of the "TIMA Public Benefit Foundation," focuses on the efforts made by AMKE's "Emfasis Foundation" to support and sustain five people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so. The film was shot over the course of more than a year. The second documentary, "Fishing for Litter" is made possible with the support of Athanasios K. Laskaridis Foundation. The film follows four seasoned fishermen as they fish from the ports of Kavala, Samos, Chios, and Lesvos with their trawlers. Together with 36 other captains of fishing boats scattered in various places in Greece, they take part in the "Fishing for Waste" programme of the Public Benefit Foundation, headed by Athanasios K. Laskaridis, which aims to fund scientific investigation, increase public knowledge of the fishing sector, and encourage modifications to its waste management methods.

Photography
Sotiris Danezis is passionately involved with photography and has displayed three solo exhibitions in addition to taking part in other group shows.

In 2008, at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, he held his first exhibition entitled "A Second of Silence" .A year later, the Museum of Cycladic Art, in Athens, hosted his second exhibition with the name "A Complex World".

He exhibited his third solo show, titled "Non-Returns" in April 2022. The Municipality of Piraeus, the Municipal Gallery of the Municipality of Piraeus, and the Laboratory of Philosophy and Photography collaborated on the show, which also included sponsors from the fields of technology and communication, including LG OLED TV and Danezis Stories. More than 300 photographic pieces, installations, projections, and snapshots from his documentaries were displayed. For the first time, the display featured personal items he brought back to Greece as reminders of the missions he completed and the narratives he produced. The complete photographic collection of work he displayed was produced throughout the course of his 25-year career, missions, and filming in more than 80 different nations, including Greece.

Educational activity
He took part in the "Journalists Field Safety" Training School of the International Peace Journalism Lab in November 2019 as one of the keynote speakers.This is the first school on the safety of journalists in the fields of wars and humanitarian crises organized by the Peace Journalism Laboratory of the Department of Journalism and Media of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in cooperation with European partners.

During 2014 and until 2018 he was teaching International News, Journalistic Research, Interview Techniques at IEK AKMI and participated as a lecturer in the educational programs of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation. In 2018 he voluntarily offered personalized, consultative guidance to young entrepreneurs as a Mentor of the People's Trust.

Other activities
Formerly a musician and radio producer, he worked with EMI to issue a double CD-DVD in 2008 that featured photographs from his personal collection as well as snippets from 25 War Zone films.

He took part in the Marangkopoulos Foundation's "The News of the War and the War on the News" book project. His writings have appeared in both weekly and monthly magazines as well as on the internet.

He took part in the play "John Lennon, Ears on a Beatle, The Beetle and Your Eyes" by American playwright Mark St. Germain, directed by Athanasia Karagiannopoulou, in February 2013 at the "Angelon Vima" Theatre, providing his voice for news texts before each scene of the play.

2003-2004

 * "War in the Falklands" 28.10.2003 (Falkland Islands)
 * "Where War Was Born" 18.11.2003 (Vietnam)
 * "The Six Day War" 16.12.2003 (Israel)
 * "The 38th Parallel" 27.01.2004 (South Korea)
 * "The Gulf War" 02.2004 (Iraq)
 * "Shock and Awe in Baghdad" 19.03.2004 (Iraq)
 * "Five Years Later" 30.04.2004 (Kosovo)
 * "100 Days" 30.05.2004 (Rwanda)
 * "Invasion of Panama" 30.06.2004 (Panama)

2004-2005

 * "The Tragedy at the Beslan School" 10.11.2004 (N. Ossetia)
 * "The Wall" 22.12.2004 (Germany)
 * "Kursk" 19.01.2005 (Russia)
 * "Black Hawk - The True Story" 16.02.2005 (Somalia)
 * "The Reds" 23.03.2005 (Cambodia)
 * "The Shadow" 20.04.2005 (El Salvador)
 * "The Test" 18.05.2005 (Japan)
 * "Nuclear Iran" 06.22.2005 (Iran)

2005-2006

 * "New Orleans Saints" 11.10.2005 (USA)
 * "The Show" 08.11.2005 (North Korea)
 * "Diamond Slaves" 06.12.2005 (Sierra Leone)
 * "The Mystery of Pearl Harbor" 01.24.2006 (USA)
 * "Death Valley" 02.07.2006 (Mexico)
 * "The Desert Rebels" 14.03.2006 (Morocco/Western Sahara)
 * "The Cocaine Jungle" (Colombia)
 * "The Red Fort" 30.05.2006 (Nepal)
 * "Nuclear Bet" 27.06.2006 (Iran)

2006-2007

 * "The Return of the Taliban" 31.10.2006 (Afghanistan)
 * "Crime in the Amazon" 28.11.2006 (Amazon)
 * "The Bridge on the River Kwai" 03.01.2007 (Thailand)
 * "Cries in the Fog" 27.02.2009 (Guatemala)
 * "Red World" (Congo)
 * "For the Honor of Arms" 24.04.2007 (Albania)
 * "Hitler's Bodyguard" 01.05.2007 (Germany)
 * "Fairy Hair - Vilina Vlas" 29.05.2007 (Bosnia)
 * "Operation First Victim" 26.06.2007 (USA)

2007-2008

 * "OOGRUK means Oil" 30.10.2007 (USA Alaska)
 * "A Restless American" 2007-11-28 (USA)
 * "The Liberian Girls" 03.01.2008 (Liberia)
 * "Order 227 - Not a Step Back" 02.26.2008 (Russia)
 * "Thousands of Little Magicians" 29.01.2008 (Congo)
 * "Two names for a dictatorship" 11.05.2008 (Myanmar)
 * "They do the Law of Honor and Blood" 29.04.2008 (Albania)
 * "Miss Narki" 27.03.2008 (Angola)
 * "The Blood of Joseph" 01.07.2008 (Austria)

2008-2009

 * "The Polygon" 30.09.2008 (Kazakhstan)
 * "The Land of 12 Wonders" 28.10.2008 (Transnistria)
 * "My Name is Shlobile" 25.11.2008 (South Africa)
 * "Status Quo" 30.12.2008 (Jerusalem)
 * "The Big Three" 01.27.2009 (USA)
 * "The Others" 24.02.2009 (Israel)
 * "Cousin Zakas" 31.03.2009 (Haiti)
 * "The House of Journalists" 28.04.2009 (France)
 * "The Player" 26.05.2009 (Kalmykia)
 * "The Curse of the Red Mountain" 30.06.2009 (Romania)

2009-2010

 * "Knights of the KKK" 16.10.2009 (USA)
 * "Gaetano Grado - Born Mobster" 26.11.2009 (Italy)
 * "Omerta" 10.12.2009 (Italy)
 * "Miracle I" 21.03.2010 (Haiti)
 * "The Miracle II" 25.03.2010 (Haiti)
 * "The Smell of...Panic" 18.04.2010 (Ivory Coast)
 * "Dance of the Killers" 14.01.2010 (Philippines)
 * "The Nightmare of Morpheus" 11.02.2010 (Central African Republic)
 * "Fire and Ice" 10.06.2010 (Iceland)
 * "The Prince and the Black Diamonds" 04.07.2010 (Ghana)

2010-2011

 * "Buried Alive" 14.10.2010 (Chile)
 * "Chasing People" 11/16/2010 (USA)
 * "Fire in the Yellow Sea" 21.12.2010 (England)
 * "The End of Silence" 27.01.2011 (Germany, Italy, Ireland)
 * "The Partner of Truth" 10.02.2011 (Germany, Italy, Ireland)
 * "Revolution Days I" 14.04.2011 (Libya)
 * "Revolution Days II" 21.04.2011 (Libya)
 * "Invisible Sweet Oil I" 31.05.2011 (USA)
 * "Invisible Sweet Oil II" 06.07.2011 (USA)
 * "Burrnesha: Sworn Man" 30.06.2011 (Albania)

2011-2012

 * "The End of Innocence" 23.10.2011 (Norway)
 * "The Bewitcher of the Italians I" 22.01.201 (Italy)
 * "The Italian Beggar II" 02.05.2012 (Italy)
 * "99%" 2011-12-21 (USA)
 * "Soldiers Without a Name I" 21.3.2012 (USA)
 * "Soldiers Without a Name II" 04.04.2012 (USA)
 * "Last Bow" 16.05.2012 (Italy)
 * "A Storm in the Spring" 06.06.2012 (Bosnia)
 * "14.25" 04.07.2012 (Germany)

2015

 * "The Madmen of God" 01.03.2015
 * "A German "F" Word" 03/15/2015
 * "The Big Sale" 29.03.2015
 * "Wild Balkan West" 19.04.2015 (Bulgaria, Greece)
 * "The Gambling Gene" 03.05.2015 (Bulgaria)
 * "Negative Litigation" 17.05.2015
 * "The Great Travelers" 04.06.2015
 * "A Good Fish" 23.07.2015
 * "The King of Water" 30.07.2015

2015-2016

 * "The Children of Chrysomilia" (15.11.2015)
 * "Greeks from Abroad" (13.12.2015)
 * "Made of Stars" (10.01.2016)
 * "The Product" (24.01.2016)
 * "Tango for a Vote" (02.07.16)
 * "Born Again" (21.02.2016)
 * "The Other People" (03.06.2016)
 * "Caged" (20.03.2016)
 * "Outsiders" (10.04.2016)
 * "Music Without End" (29.04.2016)
 * "A Second Sun" (15.05.2016)
 * "The Road to the Dream" (29.06.2016)

Publications - Interviews

 * Sotiris Danezis: "There is no story worth your life"
 * Sotiris Danezis: In the City of...terror (To Vima, November 20, 2015)
 * Sotiris Danezis: "Bulletin or "War Zone?"" (To Vima, February 9, 2011)
 * The Five Continents Reporter (eMMEis, July 2008)
 * SUNDAY: Sotiris Danezis (Messenger, April 1, 2007)
 * Occupation: reporter (only or what else?) (Fighting Journalism, February 5, 2010)
 * We found Anonymous via e-mail (To Vima, March 18, 2012)
 * Frozen Fire (LIFO, September 20, 2007)
 * Interview with Sotiris Danezis (creator of the documentary "Red World") (in.gr March 15, 2007)
 * Response from the Trenches (Enimerosi24.gr)
 * To arms, to arms (Enimerosi24.gr)
 * The end of the silence about the sexual scandals in the Catholic Church (To Vima, January 27, 2011)
 * Big winner in the update (To Vima, June 7, 2009)
 * Television in the era of Lockout (Marianna Giantzi - Kathimerini, August 11, 2012)
 * Europe for Me

Social media

 * "War Zone" Facebook Page
 * "Orizontas" Facebook Page