Gellert Tamas was born in Kristianstad, southern Sweden, in 1963 and is now a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker. His working method is a documentary style combining investigative journalism with literary storytelling. In 1983 he enrolled at Lund University in Sweden, where he majored in political science and economics.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Gellert Tamas has written articles for leading newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, as well as the TV current affairs programme Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) on TV4 and Uppdrag Granskning (Mission Investigate) on Swedish public service television. In 1990 he covered the transitional period in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In 1991 he covered the wars in former Yugoslavia and presented the first substantive coverage of racist violence in Sweden. In 1996 he travelled in Transylvania, Romania, and published several reports on the plight of the Hungarian minority and the situation of the Romani people there. His 2002 book The Laserman, about the racist serial killer John Ausonius, became a bestseller and won several awards. In 2009 he published his second book De apatiska (The Apathetic – on Power, Myths and Manipulation) about refugee children with severe stress syndromes who were dubbed the ‘apathetic children’ by the media.

Gellert Tamas has also produced several documentaries on topics such as the racist serial killer John Ausonius and the flooding disaster in South East Asia in 2004. His documentary, Imprisoned – The Untold Story of Dawit Isaak, about the Swedish–Eritrean author Dawit Isaak, has been shown in the EU parliament. He was the co-director and producer of the 2015 documentary Taikon –The Untold Story of a Roma Freedom Fighter.

References

http://tamas.se/gellert-tamas/
https://www.taikon.se/english/

Filmography

2005 The Laserman, won the Crystal Prize for best documentary of the year, Prix Europa – special commendation for non-fiction TV

2005 Another Day

2011 Imprisoned – The Untold Story of Dawit Isaak

2015 Taikon – The Untold Story of a Roma Freedom Fighter

Awards

2003 The Laserman won a Golden Spade for the best researched reportage book

2004 Stockholm County Council’s annual award against xenophobia

2006 Special prize of the Swedish Publishers’ Association for the book The Laserman

City of Stockholm’s honorary prize for literature

Ikaros Prize – best TV current affairs programme for The Apathetic Children