Jackie Spinner, an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and former Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, directed a documentary in which she tells the story of Moroccan parents and children with autism, Chicago Parent said. The documentary, titled «Don't Forget Me», was co-directed by Moroccan filmmaker Rajae Bouardi. It draws inspiration from the story of Jackie Spinner's two sons, two Moroccan boys with autism that she adopted. She returned to Morocco in 2017 to make this documentary, which almost entirely produced by young Moroccans. «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 in a news release. «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», she said. Houda Zakri, who advises families who have children with special needs, said in that Morocco does not have the institutional, economic or government support needed to help children with autism. «Families are left alone to struggle to help their children integrate a careless society and to live with fear from the future», she concluded.
