Maja Pavlin has been a regular freelance collaborator of Television Slovenia (TV SLO) since 1999, working as a self-employed director, screenwriter, and journalist. She is the author of numerous documentary, educational, cultural, children’s, and youth audiovisual works.
Her body of work includes a wide range of documentary films with a strong focus on music, youth culture, and socially engaged themes, such as Šuto Orizari — about Roma weddings and the Queen of Roma music, Esma Redžepova, in Macedonia (2004); Sem cigan (I Am a Gypsy) — about Roma communities in Prekmurje (2006); Romski vsakdan (Roma Everyday Life) — about Roma communities in Bela krajina (2010); Neira — about the consequences of the foster care system in Slovenia (2012); Charlatan Magnifique — a portrait of Magnifico (2016); Kino Šiška (2019); Orlek: Knap’n’Roll (2021); Prijatelji mladih – 70 let ZPMS (Friends of Youth – 70 Years of ZPMS) (2024); Došel je, došel Zeleni Jure – 60 let Jurjevanja v Beli krajini (Green George Has Come – 60 Years of Jurjevanje in Bela krajina) (2024); Uglašeno sobivanje – 40 let Druge godbe (Harmonised Coexistence – 40 Years of Druga godba) (2024), among others.
In 2005, she conceived and for many years edited Aritmija, the only current-affairs television programme in Slovenia dedicated to popular music, producing over 200 weekly episodes between 2005 and 2017. Since 2011, she has organised approximately 50 live concerts with an audience in Studio 2 of TV SLO, featuring selected, distinctive, and genre-diverse Slovenian popular music acts, and has also created their documentary portraits.
For several years, she co-created documentary content within projects of the International Diversity Group (IDG), a professional international working group of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), including the documentary television series New Neighbours and Free Spirits.
From 2020 to 2025, she created the educational-documentary television series Who Is Afraid of Slovene? (Kdo se boji slovenščine?) and edited the weekly children’s and youth programme Krompir.
In 2017, she received the Viktor Award from the Slovenian Academy for Best Documentary Film of 2016 for Charlatan Magnifique, as well as a Special Jury Award at the international music documentary festival Dok’n’Ritam Fest in Serbia. The EBU co-production documentary One Step Closer (Korak bliže, directed by Jernej Kastelec, written by Maja Pavlin) received a Special Mention at the DokuDoc 2020 festival.
