Lalia is a Saharaui girl who lives in a refugee camp in Algiers. She has only heard her grandmother and grandfather talk about her country, about the Sahara, that was taken away by Morroco. She dreams of one day seeing the ocean, seeing her real country. The reality she lives in is different... the uncertainty of the refugee camps, the political unbalance... but she is strong... and she knows that there can be change... she won't stop dreaming, and she won't stop longing..
Straddling a 2,400-kilometer-long wall constructed by the Moroccan army, the Western Sahara is today divided into two sections — one occupied by Morocco, the other under the control of the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement’s Polisario Front. Drawing from stories of flight, exile, interminable waiting and the arrested, persecuted lives on both sides of that wall, this film bears witness to the Sahrawi people, their land, their entrapment in other people’s dreams. In an esthetic that sublimates the real, Lost Land resonates like a score that juxtaposes sonorous landscapes, black-and-white portraits and nomadic poetics.
Forty years after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, Western Sahara remains Africa's last colony. This film chronicles the everyday violence experienced by Sahrawis living under Moroccan occupation and voices the aspirations of a desert people for whom the era of colonialist never ended.
The political upheaval in North Africa is responsibility of the Western powers —especially of the United States and France— due to the exercise of a foreign policy based on practical and economic interests instead of ethical and theoretical principles, essential for their international politic strategies, which have generated a great instability that causes chaos and violence, as occurs in Western Sahara, the last African colony according to the UN, a region on the brink of war.
Spanish actor Pepe Viyuela embarks on a personal journey on the trail of his grandfather Gervasio, a soldier in the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War.
Tebraa is the song of the women of the Sahara desert. Songs of love or lamentation that they sing when they are alone. This collective documentary made by a group of Andalusian women tells the life and injustices that Sahrawi women experience in the adverse conditions of exile and in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.
It describes the way of life of the Sahara people in the Western Sahara Desert, in particular it tells the story of a child bitten by a snake.
The Saharawi women face the thirst of the hamada, the curse of the desert, every day. They’ve built their refuge in a land where no one could survive before. For more than forty years they’ve been holding out and taking care of their people there. They ensure every drop of water is distributed according to the needs of each family … and they wait. But there’s an even more terrible thirst in their throats, for which they find no relief.
From the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf (Algeria) to Tifariti (freed territories of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic), we embark hand in hand on an adventure with a group of artists from all around the World. Each one has their own story, experience, worldview and artistry. An extraordinary and heartwarming journey through a dreamlike world that gives us hope in humanity.
Filled with vitality, humor and unexpected situations, Hamada paints an unusual portrait of a group of young friends living in a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. Western Sahara is known as “the last colony in Africa” and this conflict is the longest and one of the least known ongoing disputes in the continent, but the Sahrawi people refuse to become invisible.
Documentary about the arduous early years of the Sahrawi cause (1977)
The Sahrawi women relate their exil, the tortures, their memories and the difficulties of life as refugees. They are beautiful, touching... Educated by the Polisario Front and attached to the values of islam, they are widows, divorcede or married to fighting men. Owing to the force of circumstances, they have built a society of independant muslim women...
Atil, a documentary on the life of the Saharawis in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria. In the camps there are no limits, since creativity and innovation give rise to ideas that succeed in changing the world. As a result, this documentary presents five young Saharawis who show day by day that anything is possible, despite the difficulties. They are all examples of perseverance. Discover a place where hope is never lost.
A group of Sahrawi women come together and explain how traditional "jaimas" (tents) are set up.
The strength and will of a girl with physical difficulties in Sahrawi society.
'The Desert of the Desert' is a feature documentary about one of the longest-running and least- known colonial conflicts and the plight of the Sahrawi desert nomads of Western Sahara since Morocco's 1975 invasion. Shot in Jan./Feb. 2014 in the Saharawi Liberated Territories of Western Sahara, and in the Saharawi Refugee Camps in Tindouf, Algeria, the film shows the saga of the Sahrawis, their struggle to regain their homeland and the sad paradox of a nomadic people forced to live in confinement. During production, the crew made a rare treck through 3,000 kilometers of bleak and dangerous desert, becoming unwitting participants in the conflict when their jeep was blown up by an anti-tank mine less than a kilometer from their destination on Western Sahara's Atlantic coast.
OASIS, a documentary that tells us about water's historical role in Western Sahara via the true stories of people who turned this wild desert into a place full of life.
Mektub portrays a day in the life in the Sahrawi refugee camps, along with the declarations of some of its protagonists. But behind this seemingly calm life hides a common fight, which is to continue fighting and protesting to accomplish the single common goal that all Sahrawis have as a nation: to take back the occupied land, rebuild their country, and reunite with their families.
Taleb, who came to a refugee camp at the age of five in 1975 and returned there after his studies abroad, tells of his life as a displaced person, his gratitude for the reception and support in Algeria, and his hope that the Sahrawis may one day return to their homeland. For Taleb, this hope drives him to actively prepare for better times: as a graduate in agricultural sciences, he conceived a successful small-scale closed-loop economy in a desert under the most difficult conditions, producing enough food for self-sufficiency.
In April 2007, during the celebration of FiSahara, three friends embarked on the adventure of teaching a photography course in the Dajla refugee camp in Algeria.