TALK: Karen Vallgårda & Bābak Vakili — Who has the right to tell their family story?

FAMILY STORIES: WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO TELL?

Every family has their own stories. Some are told over and over, others are lost between generations. But how do we get to know our family's story, and who really has the right to tell it? In collaboration with researcher Karen Vallgårda, fabula invites you to another evening in the talk series about the language of emotions. This time the theme is family stories and the narratives we grow up with, inherit and help shape ourselves.

Tonight's guest is screenwriter, author and podcast documentarian Babak Vakili, who works across film, literature, music and audio narratives. He is the lead writer on the DR-drama series Outlaw, has co-written the feature films All the Way and Home and is behind the children's book series Anas Hashim. As a rapper, he has additionally released music under the name Bobby Shams. Across the different formats, his work revolves around identity, belonging and the stories we tell about ourselves.

In the award-winning DR podcast The Generation, he talks through rap, monologues and interviews about his own and his generation's upbringing as children of Iranian refugees. In his latest podcast, La Mif, he turns his gaze to his parents and examines how to pass on a culture and a history when large parts of it are marked by silence and unanswered questions.

Based on Babak's work and Karen Vallgårda's research on emotional history, we talk about how family stories come into being and what it means to turn one's own and others' experiences into a narrative. Because even when we tell our own story, we inevitably tell something about others as well.

Who has the right to tell a story that is not just one's own? What do we owe the people whose lives we draw upon? And what role do recollection, interpretation and artistic freedom play when we try to give shape to what was never said aloud?

An evening about family, remembrance and the art of telling stories that reach beyond ourselves.