Social Impact Storyteller
Nikolas uses his expertise in media to convey profound social and socio-political issues through visually powerful and emotional videos. With a distinct visual and dramaturgical skill, he creates stories that linger with the viewer and inspire action.
Nikolas Migut, born 1977, studied science of journalism and political science at the University of Mainz, Germany and journalism at USC, Australia. He lives in Hamburg with his wife Milena and his two daughters.
He worked as a trainee at North German Broadcasting (NDR / ARD) in Hamburg in 2008/2009. Afterwards, he worked for three years for investigative magazines such as award-winning Panorama (ARD). Since then, he worked as a director and video journalist for ARD and realized contract works for freeeye.tv (e.g. ZEIT ONLINE & n-tv).
He became a documentary cameraman and video journalist in NDR´s documentary and reporting unit in 2012. There he worked as a freelance filmmaker for long formats, among others for DIE BOX, which is the developing unit at NDR for documentary storytelling. The unit publishes the documentary series “7 days” and documentary talk The Story of One Evening, for which he is nominated as part of the team for Grimme Award 2015 and two years later in another episode for the German Camera Award.
His web documentary about the biggest juvenile prison in Germany, Careers in Prison, was also nominated in 2015 for the German Reporter Award. In 2016 he was a participant of the Digital Storytelling Lab of the Bavarian Broadcasting (BR). His documentaries have been invited to and awarded at numerous national and international film festivals.
Since August 2018 Nikolas has a so-called "long format author status" at NDR, which allows him to realize unlimited reports and documentaries as a freelance author and realizer with a minimum length of 25 minutes. Nikolas does not execute this option at the moment.
As a lecturer Nikolas taught at the Burda School of Journalism (BJS) and at the Academy for Film and Television Dramaturgy TOP: Talente e.V. He was invited as an expert on social impact storytelling by the Leuphana University Lueneburg, Miami Ad School Europe, fritz-kola, the Art Directors Club, as well as to various school classes in Hamburg, among others.
Nikolas is the founder of the nonprofit association ´StrassenBLUES - changes you´ with the mission ´we show creative ways out of poverty´. The association has emerged from his documentary "Street Blues". He has received many awards for his actions for and with homeless people: Among others, he has received the SMART Hero Award by Facebook and the Stiftung Digitale Chancen, the Alternative Media Award and the German government´s Active for Democracy and Tolerance competition award, the einheitspreis - Citizens´ Award for German Unity, the German Award for Online Communication, the German Sustainibility Design Award, with the first place of the competition Social Campaign and the Jury Main Prize of the German Integration Award. With the two scholarships at startsocial and the Social Impact Lab Hamburg Nikolas expanded his possibilities as a social entrepreneur.