American journalist and professor and honorary Lakeland University graduate Jackie Spinner will screen and discuss her new documentary on access to education for autistic children at Lakeland's Bradley Theatre on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 11 a.m. The screening is free and open to all.
"Don't Forget Me" showcases challenges faced by Moroccan parents and children dealing with autism and a discriminatory system that prevents them from being educated.
The short documentary follows three families with children on the autism spectrum, taking the viewer inside the schools with the children and then back home with their families. The film is a raw, honest look at what it's like to be autistic in Morocco and also what it's like to be the parent of a child whose future is so uncertain.
"It's sad to see how hard the parents of the Moroccan boys in the film work to find opportunities that I take for granted, including the right my sons have in America to go to school," Spinner said. "Like the boys in the film, my children want to go to school and they need to be there if they are going to have a chance to be productive adults."
"Don't Forget Me" was produced almost entirely by young Moroccans under the age of 25, including an orphan. It was inspired by Spinner's two Moroccan-born sons adopted from an orphanage in Meknes when they were infants. The boys are both autistic and now living in the United States.
A journalist and former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, Spinner returned to Morocco with her sons in 2017 to make the film, which was produced through the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Spinner is an editor at Gateway Journalism Review and associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, which also provided financing for the film. This is her third appearance at Lakeland as a speaker, and she received an honorary doctorate from Lakeland in 2006.