The Mother, the Hero, and the Refugee: Gendered Framings of Vulnerability in Margreth Olin’s De andre (2012) and Leo Ajkic’s Flukt (2017)

Abstract

Two Norwegian documentary voices have been particularly strong on the issue of contemporary war refugees: those of filmmaker Margreth Olin and TV host Leo Ajkic. While Olin submerged herself in a participatory documentary film project that resulted in De andre [Nowhere Home, 2012], Ajkic hosted the five-part NRK documentary series Flukt (2017). The focus of this article is on the way they relate the vulnerability of the refugee Other to their own—Olin, especially, through the national trauma brought about the Oslo Massacres (22 July 2011), and Ajkic through his personal memories of fleeing from Bosnia in the late 1990s. In both cases, the child serves as a significant figure of vulnerability. I furthermore explore Olin’s role as a postnational mother, and Ajkic’s hybrid masculinity.