Be better than the others! – Dijana Pavlovic in conversation

The actress, now living in Italy but coming from the former Jugoslavia, had given up socio-political activism for a while as she had experienced too many losses because of her activism. She wanted to be ‘just’ an actress. However, she couldn’t turn a blind eye to the injustice both in her homeland and in the country of her choice, to the communities left alone, to the stories never told. Her play presented at the festival, Speak, my life!, shows the decades-long genocide of Jenish people in Switzerland, which was surrounded by dead silence, through the eyes of the author Mariella Mehr, who herself was one of the victims. As an activist, Dijana fights against the discrimination that Roma communities face and strives to establish and put into action the European Roma Institute, the goal of which is to promote the creation and dissemination of works by Roma artists. In all her life, Dijana have found it important to fight instead of pitying herself whenever she faced any challenges. Try to overcome our own boundaries and be better than the others – that could be a good recipe in most cases.

The interview series were made with the help of the students of CEU: Ignácz Judit, Sadie Luetmer és Mayya Kelova, Frederik Ørskov; and the professional supervision of Jeremy Braverman. The videos were edited by Márton Illés and Dénes Fellegi.

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