In the Devil's garden

The tragedy of the Syrian people: War, conflict, loss, migration, exile, asylum, detention, drowning… A deserted place. Abandoned people. Abandoned country. The doors slammed shot; the doors are now locked - the keys thrown away...for what seems forever.

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.

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.

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.

The filmmaker’s grandmother moved into this house in 1971. When Rolande Ségalini died, everything remained as it was during her lifetime. But what to do with all the accumulated things? As her granddaughter Céline begins to film this material legacy, she realises that her grandmother has remained an enigma to her to this day. Room by room, she inventories, classes, counts, sorts the possessions retrieved from wardrobes, drawers, cabinets and boxes and arranges the objects into new still lives. It is an attempt to understand the deceased woman better and find out more about her. Step by step, the heiress discovers various connections to France’s colonial history.

Anna, a twelve-year-old Ukrainian gymnast, has fled her war-torn country and recently settled in Montreal with her mother, younger brother, and grandmother. Confronted by the past, the challenges of exile, and a deep need for belonging, she seeks to rebuild her identity and regain her balance. Through her child’s perspective, the documentary explores the reality of life after war, questioning what endures and what is missing, even when one has found refuge.

In the Land That Is Like You is a progress on the tracks of my lost past, with the contact of my mother, my grandmother and the man who I love, in a country which escapes from me and retains me, Lebanon.

In the 1970s, Agustín Gómez Arcos rose to the top of French literature, while in his own country, Spain, his name remained hidden. A Free Man reflects on the recent history of Spain through silences, lost stories and the role of culture and memory.

Only women, children and old people live in this Armenian village, while the men work in Russia. A life with a rhythm of its own, an independent daily life marked nonetheless by exile.

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.