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About the speaker:

Aleks is a PhD candidate in Law at University of Galway, Irish Centre for Human Rights.  He holds an MSc in Forensic Psychiatry from the Medical School of Athens, an LL.M. in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS) from the Geneva Graduate Institute and the University of Geneva, and an LL.M. in Public Law from the University of Athens.

Before starting his PhD, he worked in Athens as a lawyer in commercial arbitration and litigation.  He also served as a Legal Officer in the Greek Coast Guard in Piraeus, and taught law at the Greek Police Academy (High-Ranking Officials) in Athens. 

Abstract:

Law runs on words: who is heard, who is doubted, who is talked over, and who is pushed into silence. Silence can be a choice, but it can also be pressure. It can carry fear, need, and demand, even when nothing is said.

Soul Kicking (Soul in Mouth) (2006), directed by Yannis Economides, shows this with brutal clarity. The film is wall-to-wall speech—shouting, swearing, insults, orders, threats. The words don’t stop. They fill the room and leave no space to breathe.

And in the middle of all that noise is the main character, almost silent. He doesn’t answer back. He doesn’t defend himself. He absorbs it. His silence isn’t peace. It’s strain. It’s a way of surviving. It’s also a kind of trap: the person is there, but his voice is missing.

The film asks a hard question: when someone cannot speak, can the law still notice what their silence is carrying?