The last film screening of “Refugee Girls” draws a strong audience at Leipzig University

On 2 December, Leipzig University hosted the final screening of the documentary film “Refugee Girls”, concluding the film’s tour across all nine partner universities. The tour attracted strong participation throughout, culminating in a large audience at Leipzig University.

The tour was organised and accompanied by Elisa Gamba, PhD candidate in Human Rights, Society and Multi-level governance at the University of Padua, as part of the Arqus Inclusion and Diversity Hub.

Following the screening, there was a discussion with the film’s director Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso (who joined digitally); Cezar Hesso, a former refugee student at Leipzig University, the audience and a coordinator of the student initiative mitStudieren.

MitStudieren is an initiative founded in 2019 to support refugee and international students throughout their entire academic journey at Leipzig University — from application and language learning to navigating the student life cycle — accompanying around 40–60 refugee students each year.

The conversation touched on diverse experiences of displacement and integration, including a critical reflection on the differing treatment of non-white refugees from countries such as Afghanistan or Syria compared to those from Ukraine. Participants emphasized that political will shapes both the quality of integration and the efficiency of administrative processes.

The lively debate underscored the continuing importance of dialogue, awareness, and active support systems for refugee students across the Arqus Alliance.

This event series was part of the ad-hoc bottom-up initiative “Arqus: an Alliance supporting Refugees’ right to a Qualified and Unique Study experience”, which aimed to organise a day of reflection on refugee students at each Arqus partner university and is funded by the Arqus Innovation Fund.