“Trafficked”, which portrays the black market underworld, is the first production by a Portuguese woman to premiere on National Geographic.
Mariana Van Zeller’s documentary series “Trafficked” won five categories at the prestigious Emmy Awards dedicated to news and documentary programmes – the News & Documentary Emmy Awards – held on September 25 in New York.
The Portuguese journalist’s production was nominated for more than two dozen distinctions. The third season’s “Cyber Pirates” episode earned her the “Excellence in Science and Technology Coverage” award, “Terrorist Oil” received the “Excellence in Video Journalism” award, and “Black Market Babies” was awarded “Excellence in Coverage of Business, Consumption and Economy”.
Two other episodes of the third season of the series, which already features four seasons, were awarded for technical aspects. “Ghost Guns” received the “Excellence in Editing” award, and “MDMA” triumphed thanks to its Light Direction.
Mariana Van Zeller made history in 2021 when she launched “Trafficked”, the first series directed by a Portuguese woman to premiere on National Geographic, which soon became one of the channel’s biggest successes.
In each episode, the journalist explores how one of the world’s largest and most dangerous black markets works. The public discovers some of the investigated underworlds, such as those of drugs, weapons, and organs.
The fourth season premiered on April 6 and is available on Disney+. In this new chapter, the team travels to Manila to investigate a blackmail scheme related to sexual extortion. The show “explores the inner workings of the global underworld’s most dangerous black markets,” the synopsis says.
“In each episode, [Mariana] journeys inside a different black market – from drugs to guns to tiger parts – to meet the players, learn the business, and unearth the geopolitical circumstances and context that create the world’s multitrillion-dollar shadow economy.”
Who is Mariana Van Zeller?
The 47-year-old journalist graduated in International Relations at the Universidade Lusíada in Lisbon. After completing her degree, she began her career as a trainee journalist at the SIC Portuguese television channel and, shortly afterwards, presented a travel programme for around a year.
Mariana’s goal was to enrol in a graduate degree programme in journalism at Columbia University in the USA. She was relentless in her pursuit. She flew to the US to meet the college Dean in person, who eventually accepted her application.
One month after arriving in the USA, the September 11, 2001, attacks occurred. As one of the few Portuguese journalists in New York, she was responsible for covering and reporting the events on the “Jornal da Noite,” contributing to her international notoriety.
Her accolades include three outstanding awards: a Peabody, a People’s Voice Webby Award, and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Her documentaries and reports have taken her to places of instability and conflict, such as Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico and Syria. In “A Rota do Tráfico”, the journalist travels to other equally risky destinations.
