The trunks of return

Budha is one of the many children living in Refugee Camps for Sahrawi. One afternoon, he decides to stop playing football with his friends to play in the desert, far away from the village. Day after day, Budha is increasingly obsessed with the sand, wich hides a little secret.

Tahar is a 20-year-old Sahrawi man who lives in the Basque Country. However, his family continues to live in the Tindouf refugee camp. One day, he receives a call from there: his father is dying.

The Algerian region of Tindouf is home to more than 170,000 Sahrawis, who have been living in refugee camps since 1976, when Morocco occupied the Western Sahara region. In a place of inhospitable conditions and scarcity, the Sahrawi population lives on dwindling humanitarian aid. Six percent of them face the added difficulty of coeliac disease.

When you are born in refugee camps, you grow up dreaming that one day you will live in your homeland, and as time goes on, this never goes beyond being a dream... You become the father of a family, and at that moment, you have to face life to achieve self-reliance. You fight to reach your dreams and face the daily obstacles, between both worlds, you end up doing what you never thought to do.

A young girl, frustrated with the never-ending peace process, hopes to hand over a letter containing her suffering and dreams of independence to the Special Envoy for Western Sahara appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations when he is visiting the area. But various circumstances and obstacles make it impossible to hand over the letter. However, the girl still hopes that the letter will one day reach its destination and receive an answer.

A local film whose message is not political, but social. It's about sexual violence and society's vision of rape victims, who are scarred for life, and how they are forever haunted by the personal trauma of these events.

Toufa recreates the beginnings of the Sahrawi population’s arrival in the Hamada’s arid desert. This short film tells of the suffering of three generations of Saharan women, who through their effort and sacrifice wounds of the war were healed upon their arrival in the inhospitable territory of this part of southern Algeria.

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.

Fatma, who lives in Asuerd’s refugee camp in the Hamada of the Algerian desert, will listen in television to news that will give her a great idea … to contact with a girl from another side of the Atlantic Ocean: Sasha, one of the daughters of the president Obama.

WESTERN: SAHARA documented the pre-production of an audiovisual participatory project at Saharawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. From the trailer as part of media coverage, participants imagine a film about the creation of the Saharawi state.

This is a story about women who are fighters, tenacious, hopeful, active women…who were capable of lifting, from nothingness, in the harshest landscape of the world, life. They are the Sahrawi women. 40 years ago, they were forced into exile; the men of this region, marched to war and the women created “temporary cities”: The Refugee Camps. They invented a new day to day life which made possible a sustainable existence and a hope, of one day returning home. Coría every night dreams of the sea; the majestic image of its water, the sound of its waves, are the echoes that join the people with their homeland. The will beats in the hearts of the Sahrawi women who maintain their unbreakable spirit, ever moving forward.

In the dunes of the Sahara, a Jaima, the traditional Saharawi tent. Through the tea ritual, a woman takes us into the past and present of her people, persecuted and driven from their land. There are three teas she offers us: the first, bitter as life; the second, sweet as love; the third, mild as death. Each tea tells us a story.

A boy has a dream of traveling to the world, especially to Paris where his uncle lives, but a wall built on his land divides his country and does not allow him to travel or cross to the other side of his land.

This short film addresses the problems surrounding the appearance of narcotics in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf. These drugs are beginning to be sold in kiosks and areas close to schools, causing addictions to chemical substances among the youth.

The story of young Ahmed Tarfi might as well be the story of the Sahrawi people’s difficulties, and particularly those of the youth. The Sahrawi people are divided by a wall of more than 2000 km in length. This Moroccan wall is not only a defensive position for the occupying power, but it is also an obstacle for the cultural and social development of the original population, and also a wall of emotions and disappointments. The story of Ahmed Tarfi, despite being fictional, could very well be the story of thousands of young Sahrawis.

"… Choose a starless night in the part you line the Best in the city".

L'Aarifa is the name given to a post within the political structure of the Polisario. In the Sahrawi refugee camps this post is held by women who, at the same time, have carried great weight in the conflict. Shown in this short film is the problem that confronts one of these women in between family and work.

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.

As I´m tiny, the night seems to dark to me, so I swicht on the light in case the wardrobe monster is scared.

Eager to escape a life of confinement in the refugee camps of Western Sahara in Algeria, Mariam flees into the desert to join the army, naively believing herself to be the Joan of Arc who will save her country from occupation.