Daily programme

18:00, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, hall of the Slovenian Cinematheque (Miklošičeva 26)

Child Refugees

Discussion and screening

The children who traversed Slovenia in a single month in late 2015 – about 62,000 – could fill over 200 elementary schools. A quarter of the people applying for asylum in Europe are minors. Can they be helped, and if they can, how can we help them deal with their traumatic experience, with their loss and their stressful situation, how can we make their recovery easier and quicker and help them become more resistant to their trauma? How can we integrate child refugees into the local environment? The issue will be examined by Anica Mikuš Kos and Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik in a discussion hosted by Marija Zidar.

The one-hour discussion will be followed by a screening of Waiting for Happiness (2002), a film by acclaimed Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako (Timbuktu, 2014). Through the story of 17-year-old Abdullah who is waiting on the Mauritanian coast to be allowed entry into Europe, the film presents the conflict between Western civilization and the local African traditions.

Anica Mikuš Kos, a specialist of child psychiatry, has invaluable real-life experience, as she has been doing humanitarian work in areas of crisis all over the world for over 20 years. Even in her eighties, Mikuš Kos, who had herself lived through the ravages of World War II, still heads programmes of psycho-social rehabilitation of child refugees in war-torn areas that have recently included Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Gaza. Her work of strengthening people’s internal coping resources was also crucial during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik, a sociologist and Research Counsellor at the Slovenian Migration Institute of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, has been involved with migration studies for years and has recently been focusing on the integration of migrants. She gives lectures at the universities in Ljubljana and Nova Gorica, as well as internationally, mainly in Germany and Norway. In the context of migration studies, Milharčič Hladnik is mostly interested in interdisciplinary approaches that combine historiography, sociology and feminism.

Marija Zidar is a journalist and screenwriter (Childhood (Otroštvo, 2009), Talking Heads (Govoreče glave, 2010), Hungry for Rebellion (Lačni upora, 2013/14), all directed by Dušan Moravec). She has directed the featurette documentary Identity Smugglers (Tihotapci identitete, 2015) where she also teamed up as co-screenwriter with Ervin Hladnik Milharčič, the protagonist of the documentary. As both director and screenwriter, Zidar is currently developing a feature documentary titled Avenge, a documentary thriller/drama that explores the consequences of anarchy and lawlessness in Albania.

*In collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque