Wait, Fati!
The story of a Saharan family as it celebrates a wedding in the Tindouf refugee camp. The wedding is both the reason and the starting point for getting to know the members of this family who have reached a point where they must make important decisions.
Lost land
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.
Salam
The Sahrawi people have lived in exile for almost half a century in the driest desert of the African continent. There, where basic resources such as water are scarce, there is a film school. As the world looks the other way, a group of young filmmakers carries out a battle against oblivion.
Wilaya
Fatimetu returns to the Wilaya of Smara for the funeral of her mother, after 16 years living in Spain. There she meets her brother Jatri, who is expecting his first child with Aichetu his wife, and her sister Hayat. Jatri tells her that she has inherited the family Khaimah and must care for her sister. Fatimetu reluctantly accepts the last will of her mother, though she is not sure how to take care of her sister as she can barely take care of herself.
Laatash
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.
Sahrawi people
Documentary about the arduous early years of the Sahrawi cause (1977)
Aadat
There are towns that build their lives from the will where the inert reigns, where the landscape is arid and dead and there are only infinite extensions of sand and stones. Forgotten, disregarded, doomed to the most extreme survival, the Sahrawis still retain their hope for justice.
Crisis
In the middle of Western Sahara desert, where no water, no trees, no animals live but a bunch of refugees, struggling in poverty to survive the harsh habitat, the least of the problem one might face is the environmental crisis.
Unsubmissive
Saharawi women have always been at the forefront of the resistance against colonialism and the plunder of their territory by Morocco. In spite of Morocco’s repression, intensified by the collapse of the ceasefire with the Polisario Front in November 2020, activists living under occupation gathered to document the violence perpetrated against their daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers since 1975. This documentary explores this historical process through the voices of its protagonists in their triple roles as victims, researchers, and international activists. A sensitive and close analysis of these experiences is complemented by animations and statistics little known to the general public. The result is an astonishing record of the gravity and extent of the violence exercised by Morocco against women, but also a photograph of colonialism from a gender perspective that emphasizes the unwavering strength of these activists to fight for their people’s rights.
Sahara Marathon
This film offers a picture of the tense situation in which the Sahrawi people have lived for more than 30 years. The yearly celebration of a marathon in the Sahrawi refugee camps serves as the central focus of the story.
All about my tent
The relevant NGOs and the Spanish film industry have organized the First International Sahara Film Festival, with the official objective of bringing films to refugee camps for the first time for a few days. With a humorous tone and a self-critical intention, the aim is to include a range of shades of gray in a world dominated by black, white, and slogans.
Mektub
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.
Sadig: my Sahrawi friend
Habub and Marcos establish a relationship through “video letters” during the wintertime. Through these videos, we see what daily life is like in the Sahrawi refugee camps and, more importantly, how important the friendship between these two kids is.
The world through their eyes
In April of 2006 a total of 150 disposable cameras were distributed in two of the Sahrawi refugee camps with the objective of producing a self-portait of refugee families who have lived in the desert for 30 years.
Desert rose
Through images and testimonies of Sahrawi women, this film introduces us to the situation and the living conditions the Sahrawi people have been subjected to since, in 1975, Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco and thousands of men, women and children were forced to flee and look for refuge in Algerian territory, in the inhumane "hamada" (rocky desert) of Tindouf. Sahrawi women, exiled to the refugee camps of Tindouf since 1975, have been the driving force behind a genuine revolution in all areas of Sahara society. They have carried out the miracle of reviving the spirit of a devastated community in the middle of a hostile, rocky desert.
Dajla: cinema and oblivion
The rocky desert in southwestern Algeria is the temporary home of about 150,000 refugees from Western Sahara. Goats grazing or the opening of a beauty salon are among the many scenes of everyday life of people who are eagerly awaiting the beginning of the film festival. The observational documentary captures the unwavering love of film in a place that the world has forgotten.
I'm tiny
As I´m tiny, the night seems to dark to me, so I swicht on the light in case the wardrobe monster is scared.
Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony
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.
Hamada
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.
Jadijetu's journey
The narrative of resistance of Sahrawi poet Jadijetu Alaÿat flows against the background of raveling images from an unknown land.