You’re invited to an intimate, special screening of the Subject Matter granted documentary
REFUGE
Followed by a conversation with director Din Blakenship, protagonist Chris Buckley, and Myrieme Churchill, executive director of the Subject Matter granted nonprofit
PARENTS FOR PEACE
Thursday, June 1st, 2023
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM | 160 W. 12th Street, NYC
Please RSVP by May 26th to david (at) subjectmatter (dot) org
About the film: A leader in a white nationalist hate group finds healing from the people he once hated—a Muslim heart doctor and his town of refugees.
The Speakers
Chris Buckley, Protagonist in Refuge and team member at Parents for Peace
A native of Ohio and currently based in Georgia, Chris Buckley is a former KKK member who now helps deradicalize young people caught up in extremism. After serving in the US Army in Afghanistan, Buckley joined the Georgia White Knights as an Imperial Nighthawk, drawn in by the movement’s anti-Muslim and racist values. Thanks to an intervention by former white power skinhead Arno Michaelis and Kurdish refugee Dr. Heval Mohamed Kelli, Buckley was able to exit extremism. He works with Parents for Peace to provide direct interventions with individuals of concern and also created the Trauma & Recovery Program to provide positive coping skills to veterans and police officers. Buckley has been featured in The Washington Post, CNN, and Bloomberg Magazine; been the subject of the documentary “Refuge”; and testified to the United States Congress.
Myrieme Nadri-Churchill, Executive Director of Parents for Peace
A native of Morocco, Nadri-Churchill has over 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist working in a variety of settings in the U.S. and internationally. She began her career in southern France, where she intervened with first- and second-generation North African immigrants trafficked into sex-work in Marseille and facilitated group therapy at a juvenile detention center in Nice. After relocating to the United States, she worked as a group therapy counselor in an inpatient dual-diagnosis unit at Beth Israel Deaconess. With several certifications in life-coaching, she has maintained a professional coaching practice in Monaco and delivered leadership training programs with the Institute Regional Administration in Nantes.
Nadri-Churchill’s unusual combination of intervention and coaching experiences shaped the unique methodology of the Parents for Peace helpline. She has helped hundreds of American families successfully intervene to rescue loved ones falling into extremism. A leading international expert on deradicalization, her unique work has been profiled by Reuters, NPR, and the Washington Post, and she has presented at the European Parliament, Harvard University, Twitter corporate headquarters, and on Capitol Hill.
Din Blankenship, Co-Director and producer of Refuge
Din is an award-winning filmmaker based in Birmingham, Alabama. Her first documentary, REFUGE premiered at DOC NYC in 2021, where it was awarded Special Mention in the US Competition, was a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize, and was recently listed in USA Today’s List of Movies You’ll Want to Watch in 2023. It has since won both the Audience Award and Jury Award for Best Documentary at numerous film festivals. Din also directed and produced the short documentary, WORTHY that is currently in Post-Production and scheduled to be released later this year.
Prior to filmmaking, Din worked in architecture for over a decade. She has a Masters in Architecture with High Distinction from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia. Din has designed transitional shelters for refugees and was invited to present her work at the Symposium for the Architecture of Disaster Relief. In 2021, Din founded Late Bloomer Films and is in production on Love, Your Birth Mom, a feature documentary that follows several women with unplanned pregnancies who are considering adoption. Each will ultimately decide whether to raise their children or place them into the arms of another family.
More information on Refuge and Parents for Peace here.