Program maker and journalist Coen Verbraak has won the Sonja Barend Award for the second time in his career, the prize for the best TV interview of the year. He was awarded for a conversation he had with Dutchbat veteran Liesbeth Beukeboom in the series broadcast this summer Srebrenica – the powerless mission of Dutchbat.
Verbraak was awarded the prize by Sonja Barend in the TV program Eve. In the series he spoke at length with a number of Dutch soldiers who experienced the fall of Srebrenica in 1995 from close by.
“Verbraak questions, in the beautiful sentences as we are used to from him, with compassion to the wry details of the mission,” the jury motivated the nomination. Other nominees included Tijs van den Brink, Danny Ghosen, Jeroen Wollaars and Eva Jinek. Who receives the prize is determined by the votes of forty interviewers, journalists and TV critics.
In 2013 Verbraak was already awarded the prize for a critical interview with former ABN Amrotopman Rijkman Groenink in his series Looking into the soul. Last year, the Sonja Barend Award went to EO program maker Kefah Allush for his conversation with former armed forces commander Peter van Uhm about the loss of his son. He died the day after Van Uhms took up his position in Afghanistan in 2008.
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