I was field director and cinematographer on the Dutch chapter of Addicted: The Narco Plague, an international series on the cocaine trade made for Channel News Asia, directed by Shehzad Hameed Ahmad. The story: how organised crime recruits teenagers in the Netherlands, and one man’s work to pull them back out.

The series followed the cocaine trade across six continents, from the farms of Colombia to the port of Antwerp to the streets of Philadelphia. The Netherlands is where it reaches the kids: cheap hands to empty the containers, and recruits for the turf wars.

My job was the Netherlands: securing access to the subject, directing the shoot, and the interview. I had a DP for one day. The other day I took the camera myself, to get closer to the subject

The subject was Danny de Vries. He grew up on the streets of Utrecht and got stabbed at sixteen. A police officer pushed him into a re-integration programme. He spent fifteen years in a police arrest team, then opened Colloseum, a kickboxing gym in Utrecht. Now he uses that gym to reach kids before the cartels do. The same kid he used to be.

He knows exactly what the street offers them. A few thousand euros to empty a drug container in Rotterdam. A scooter to shoot a rival. He also knows what it costs.

We kept the kids he works with off camera, by agreement with Danny.

Addicted: The Narco Plague won at the World Media Festival in Berlin and was shortlisted for the AIB Awards 2025. The wider series won Best Documentary Series at the Asian Academy Creative Awards.