Caribbeans of the Sahara

In 1996 I took the conservatory exam. I missed it. A year ago I was asked to do a masterclass on acting in cinema. I went there. I met a lively, joyful and passionate youth. Among my students there was Clémence. The following year, she asked me to film their last show. I felt her urgency and the fear she had of leaving this mythical place. So I accepted.  By filming this youth, I revisited mine.

For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.

Due to the measures taken by the government, students have fewer and fewer prospects for a meaningful future. Life is on pause and society is kept in fear. The confidence in a bright future is gone. Even after 18 months, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. The many promises have not yet changed this situation. In this moving documentary, young people give an idea of the impact of the measures on their lives. Is there still hope or has the damage already been done?

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)

Known for her intimate films, director Kim O’Bomsawin (Call Me Human) invites viewers into the lives of Indigenous youth in this absorbing new documentary. Shot over six years, the film brings us the moving stories, dreams, and experiences of three groups of children and teens from different Indigenous nations: Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree, and Innu. In following these young people through the formative years of their childhood and right through their high school years, we witness their daily lives, their ideas, and aspirations for themselves and their communities, as well as some of the challenges they face.

Young people who decide to leave their home to seek opportunities for the future face different difficulties on a daily basis. The inevitable estrangement with family and lifelong friends. The constant lack of understanding, the coldness and individualism of the new city. The stress and even the feeling of being a stranger back home. This journey to the future sets out issues about identity, nostalgia and courage, while they fight to find their place in a changeable world.

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…

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.

Overlooking the sea, two young men contemplate what is beyond the horizon as their friends and family leave for the allure of a new life.

Over a dozen students at this school in Quebec were radicalised. To tackle the issue, a pilot project was launched to heal divides within the student body. It's a hybrid cultural model, made up of the many cultures of its students.

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.

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

This is the story of an ordinary man transformed by history. A simple baker from Besançon who became a political symbol of resistance. That of a France that knows how much it needs others to grow. Of working classes rejecting the siren calls of populism. He says: "I was nothing and I became a monster" to express the vertigo of his transformation. And so the baker entered politics, visited the United States in the footsteps of Martin Luther King, brought aid to the Ukrainians, and ran for legislative elections. Fearless. Fighting with all his heart. It is this inspiring, touching, and funny human epic that Pedro da Fonseca's camera followed closely, capturing his doubts, his hesitations, and his emotions.

A documentary about a night café called Walkers, its workers and the youth – largely immigrants – populating the café during the night.