My Sahrawi family

The film situates the viewer within a makeshift space of an animal market in Algeria. Drifting between feeding and waiting, one attunes to the bodies of goats and camels, the oldest companions of Arab men. As we move deeper into the desert, the site turns into a sacrifice zone and reveals its dark geopolitical secrets. The sensory ethnography film will invite you to question the banality of displacement, confinement and exploitation in an out-of-sight territory.

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.

Ismael, Hindu and Bachir are three Sahrawis living in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). They tell us about their lives away from their home country (Western Sahara), their own personal history and experiences... and the challenges they face in an island they consider something of a second home. This short film combines the three main characters' impressions with archive images of the Dignity Camp, of the Tindouf camps, and images of the Western Sahara in the mid- 70's. A Canary Islands production shooted in Gáldar and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Testimonies of a people enlisted on the path of independence. Records taken at refugee camps in Tindouf (Sahara Desert in southern Algeria) and Bir Lehlu (region liberated by the Polisario Front)

Every year, approximately 800 Sahrawi boys and girls leave the refugee camps to study in Cuba, Algeria and Libya… 15 years later, they return biologists, doctors, engineers… but when they get back to the refugee camps all they have is the desert…

Documentary that denounces the damages caused by the use of land mines in Western Sahara and shows the lives of those affected.

A documentary about the situation of the saharawi people in the refugee camps of Tindouf through the life and participation in the 2019 Sahara Marathon of the saharawi athlete and political refugee Amaidan Salah. An amateur documentary made using only a cellphone.

Smara is the city of dust, kingdom of sirocco, a surviving ruin of a suffocating region… Thousands of Sahrawis who fled Western Sahara after the war against Morocco (36 years ago) live in this refugee camp, located in the Sahara’s inhospitable north, in the middle of the Algerian hamada. They live here, under poor human conditions, thanks to international help. A small film cooperative fights, with barely any means, to elevate the voices of young Saharawis. It is one of the many Nollywoods (Hollywood of emptiness) found in Africa.

The film offers an insight into a nearly forgotten world. The times when the Sahrawi war of independence was on the international agenda seem to be long forgotten. The fate of hundreds of thousands Sahrawis living in refugee camps since the 1970s seems not to be spectacular enough for further attention. Inthe film the women get a chance to speak. It is a film about their experiences and hopes. It is mainly a film about life in surroundings where seemingly normal things are real challenges. The film is a simple and impressive portrait of women, who have been fighting against their fate to help their people. They have never lost their drive, no matter how unfavourable the circumstances have been. It reminds us of the fate of the Sahrawi people. The film is realistic, without any kitsch elements. It shows impressive pictures of the real lives of strong women, who have never stopped fighting for independence.

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.

Silence always surrounds the mine, first when it explodes and then when it eternally haunts its victims. The history of the silence of this fire hidden by Morocco in the sand of Western Sahara has left more than 4,000 victims in what is considered the largest minefield in the world. Daha and Fatimetu suffered the effect of the silence of the mines, their lives changed forever, like that of the Saharawi people who, after 14 years cleaning the desert of artifacts, the rupture of the ceasefire have left the future of the contamination of their territory.

A documentary that shows the current state of territorial limbo in which the Sahrawi people live through the gaze of those who arrive and leave, those who resist, of the occupiers and the occupieds; a multifaceted view of what is behind the facts.

A nine-year old girl, Naha, who in day-to-day life studies primary education en Wilaya de Smara is the point of departure for this documentary. Through the her family life, teachers, those responsible for Sahrawi education and NGOS, we understand the education system in the camps causing us to be in awe of the patience of the Sahrawi people, refugees for 35 years, holding out hope for a definitive solution to the conflict. This documentary intends to introduce the viewer to the situation of the Sahrawi people in the camps through one of the most basic needs for the development of a community: chidren's education. Education in the Sahrawi refugee camps is supported by women being those that develop and strengthen the task of educating in schools.

Bubisher, as well as being 'the bird of luck', is a word loaded with literary meaning in Spanish in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf. Seeing the way in which two cultures interact through small stories and tales can is striking and so is the contrast between the resilience of the young female generations and the realities of life in the desert. This documentary paints a picture of a generation of young female Sahrawis.

Sahrawi artist and visual poet Mohamed Sleiman Labat follows the story of the emerging phenomenon of small scale family gardens in his local community in the Hamada Desert. The film features the story of four families in Samara Camp with small scale gardens, their practices and the knowledge they develop as part of their practices in the garden. The camps are located in a very harsh environment with extreme climate conditions, and the Sahrawi are still dependent on international food aid.