German TV channel ZDF has made 3 documentaries about Europe's youngest and newest queens: queen Letizia of Spain, queen Maxima of the Netherlands and queen Mathilde of the Belgians.
The episode on Mathilde will be broadcast on Saturday 31st August 2019 at 19:25 on ZDF.
Mathilde of Belgium has an agenda, one she works for unrelentlessly: fighting poverty, improving education, healthcare and the empowerment of women & children.
With a degree in psychology she's a leading figure when it comes to mental healthcare and the wellbeing of children. This mother of four recorded a video message at the royal palace to help battle cyber bullying.
As the honorary chair of Child Focus she works for missing and sexually exploited children - a theme close to the Belgians' heart ever since the monstruous acts of Marc Dutroux in the mid 1990s. She takes this commitment for children's rights further, on an international scale as the honorary president of UNICEF Belgium. And with her most recent engagement she's become part of a global movement. Since 2016 she's been appointed by the UN as one of the 17 advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2017 she was honoured in Germany for this commitment, when she received
the Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis in Düsseldorf. It was the first and only award the queen has ever accepted.
Journalists Annette von der Heyde and Julia Melchior accompanied the queen on her state visit to South Korea and at the World Economic Forum in Davos. They watched Mathilde receiving French president Macron & his wife Brigitte when they paid a state visit to Belgium, and followed her around important remembrance ceremonies and at everyday activities.
They portray a woman who's in touch with others, a woman who wants to change the world. A queen with a heavy workload who's still taken the time to work exclusively with ZDF: the team was received in her private offices and she gave them a tour through the royal palace, looking for traces of German royal ancesters.
Belgian vice PM & Minister for Development Cooperation Alexander de Croo, and Amina Mohammed, vice secretary-general of the UN talk about the queen's work. Ludwig Prinz von Bayern
explains the links that exist between the Belgian royals and the Wittelsbach of Bavaria and journalist Patrick Weber talks about Mathilde's inspiring work as representative of the crown, and as a figure of unity between different cultures.
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