The play of Dijana Pavlovic gives insight into the almost completely unknown Swiss genocide of nomadic Jenish people, through the life of Mariella Mehr. The program that was run by the government until the ‘70ies teared families apart, women were sterilized, children bore compulsory treatment in order to ‘cure’ their nomadic genes – the aim was to raise the members of a community that had been deprived of their human rights as ‘normal’  Swiss citizens. Although the state apologized 30 years ago, the details of the program were made secret for 100 years, the teachers, doctors and organizations – amongst them Pro Juventute Stiftung – have continued their work without interruption. Interview with Dijana Pavlovic >>>

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 challe...