Don't Forget Me follows three Moroccan families with children on the autism spectrum whose parents are struggling to educate them in a country where children with disabilities do not have a right to go to school. The documentary was inspired by Jackie Spinner's two Moroccan-born sons, who also are autistic and now living in the United States. Spinner, a journalist and former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, returned to Morocco with her sons in 2017 to make this film.
The 28-minute documentary is in Arabic and subtitled in English for a U.S. audience and in Amazigh for a Moroccan audience.
Initial funding for the film was provided through grants from Columbia College Chicago and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
The doc team is made up almost exclusively of young Moroccans. The executive producer, producer and associate producer are all women.
Jackie Spinner is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago. She was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 14 years and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2017, Spinner was the recipient of a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and spent three months in Morocco reporting for The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor. She lives in Chicago with her Moroccan-born sons.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, MMAC - Mind, Medicine, and Culture http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/mmac/index.html