Quick Facts
Biography
Zlata Filipović (born 3 December 1980) is a Bosnian writer and author of Zlata's Diary.
Biography
The only child of an advocate and a chemist, Filipović grew up in a middle-class family. She was an honor student, with ambitions to become a journalist. From 1991-93, she wrote in her diary, Mimmy, about the horrors of the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, through which she lived.
Filipović and her family survived and escaped to Paris, in 1993 where they stayed for a year. She attended St. Andrew's College, Dublin (a senior school), going on to graduate from the University of Oxford in 2001 with a BA in human sciences, and has lived in Dublin, Ireland since October 1995, where she studied at Trinity College Dublin.
Filipović has continued to write. She wrote the foreword to The Freedom Writers Diary and co-edited Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq. She appeared on the French talk show Tout le monde en parle on 19 November 2006. She currently lives in Dublin, and works in the field of documentary and other film production.
Works
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Zlata's Diary | |
| 1999 | The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them | Foreword by Zlata Filipović |
| 2004 | Milošević: The People's Tyrant | Preface & translation by Zlata Filipović |
| 2006 | Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq | Co-edited by Zlata Filipović |
| 2009 | From the Republic of Conscience: Stories Inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights | Article 4, "Lost in Arizona" by Zlata Filipović |
| 2010 | Even in Chaos: Education in Times of Emergency | Chapter six, "Hear Our Voices: Experiences of Conflict-Affected Children" by Zlata Filipović |
Activism
In 2011, she produced the short film Stand Up! for the Stand Up! campaign created by BeLonG To, an LGBTQ youth service organisation in Ireland against homophobic bullying in schools. It has been viewed over 1.6 million times on YouTube.
She served on the Executive Committee of Amnesty International Ireland (2007-2013) and is a founding member of NYPAW (Network of Young People Affected by War) She has spoken extensively at schools and universities around the world on issues of children in conflict. She was a member of the UNESCO Jury for the Prize for Children and Young People's Literature for Tolerance. She is a recipient of the Child of Courage Award by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles (1994).
Filmography
Production
- 2010: Blood of the Irish (documentary)
- 2011: Hold on Tight (documentary)
- 2012: Three Men Go to War (documentary)
- 2012: Motion Sickness (short)
- 2013: Here Was Cuba (documentary)
- 2014: Somebody to love (documentary)
- 2015: OCD and Me
- 2015: The Wake
- 2015: The Farthest (documentary, in production)