A woman who dosen’t want to be invisible

Mohsen Azarm

Erased is a 2018 feature film that tells the story of Ana who gives birth at the local hospital in Slovenia. Everything goes well except for one small problem, the paperwork – her file is not on the computer. A temporary loss of data seems to be caused by a software glitch, nothing to worry about. Within a few days, Ana is entangled in a web of bureaucracy of Kafkaesque proportions: not being in the computer means no social security, no permanent address and no baby. She is brutally forced to leave a newborn girl alone at the hospital without any right to visit her until everything is sorted out. All of a sudden Ana is a foreigner, even though she has lived in Slovenia all of her life. Legally, she doesn’t exist. So, her child is an orphan. And orphans are put up for adoption. The film looks at over 25,000 people who were erased in 1992 by the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Slovenia for being born outside of Slovenia, yet in the states that once were part of Yugoslavia. The majority of this population still hasn’t been able to regain their legal status.