Magic Sahara

This film presents, through the eyes four students - Gemma, Colo, Cristian and Mireia - their experience of the trip, the feelings that moved them, the work carried out in the camps and, above all, their contribution to raising awareness of the unresolved difficulties the Sahrawi people face.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

"We used to travel trough Sahara in quest for clouds. We did not depend on no airplanes, nor cars, just on our camels” Sahrawi grandpas recall today.
 Since 1975 Sahrawi people live in refugee camps, surviving the desert, fighting for its independence. This documentary is witness of the birth of two Sahrawi girls, of the love that their families celebrate at their birth and at the same time is witness of their heritage of fight to recover their freedom.

Documentary that explains the current climate of political turmoil in the north of Africa caused by the embedded problem of the decolonization of Western Sahara. A region on the brink of war. The responsibility of Western governments and social media, especially France and Spain, whose foreign policy based on economic interests puts on the background moral principles. In the case of Spain also its responsibilities as administrator of the territory which has triggered a situation of chaos and violence. The film describes the current situation of Western Sahara in its three conflict zones, presents its protagonists and denounces the informative silence condemning the Saharawi people to the oblivion.

I am a girl of the waves, from a village of seafarers. Some days, I go out with my boat to the sea. But I don’t go alone. Maoimouna comes with me.

A photography workshop in the Sahrawi refugee camps shows the situation of uprooted people through their own eyes. At the same time, the direc- tor tries to reestablish contact with her little sister from a Sahrawi foster care, also affected by the in- vasion of her land.

In a refugee camp in the Sahara desert lives a deaf boy who wants to learn to write. Welcome to the silent world of Kori and his best friend the camel Caramelo.

Education Center for disabled children located in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Despite the precarious conditions in which this population lives since 40 years ago, the Polisario Front as the representative of the Sahrawi people has promoted inclusion as a way to avoid marginalization and discrimination of one of the most vulnerable populations within these territories: children with special needs. "Castro" is the man who devotes his life to this beautiful project fighting all odds: physical, psychic, social, economic, and even the incomprehensions of his own society. The Sahrawis are living (resisting) in one of the harshest deserts on Earth but Castro has the magic formula to achieve the inclusion of these wonderful beings in his society and in the rest of the world: MUSAWAT, EQUALITY.