Movi Hub

Soukeina, 4400 days of night

2017

After the military occupation of Western Sahara in 1976, Moroccan government attacked the civil population with hard repression, forcing hundreds of Saharan people to “disappear” in clandestine jails. An invisible and slow death was the only horizon. However, some prisoners were able to survive after suffering their own “extinction” for more tan 10 years, ripped from their families, suffering torture, in total isolation. When they finally were released, their known world had changed radically.

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Sirocco: Winds of resistance

2016

Drawing from the inspiration of their grandmothers, singer Aziza Brahim and activist Senia Abderhaman wrestle for the independence of their people from a brutal and corporate backed Moroccan regime using culturally derived methods of music, poetry, and nonviolent resistance.

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Messages from Western Sahara

2015

Stories of resistance, words of pain and suffering, tales of life and death, and in particular of dignity, that show the reality that the Sahrawi people experience in Western Sahara. This documentary gathers the testimonies collected during a journey to the occupied territories by an international delegation headed by the mayor of Donostia/San Sebastián, Juan Karlos Izagirre. Over the course of five days they held over twenty secret meetings with human rights activists, from home to home, constantly under watch by the Moroccan police. Despite living under an occupation that has lasted for almost 40 years, the Sahrawi people maintain their identity and culture. A revolutionary act, a struggle to defend their right to exist as a people.

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Free Sultana

2021

The documentary #FreeSultana, tells the story of a Sahrawi activist who has been under house arrest for a year with her entire family, without a court order. During this time, the Moroccan paramilitaries have destroyed her house, stoned, assaulted, raped, poisoned the Jaya sisters.

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You can't get there from here

2021

An international team of 4 friends undertake the Plymouth to Dakar Challenge a ‘banger rally’ which annually shadows the route of the Paris Dakar Rally. They acquire two old Mercedes vans and take a 3 week route through Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia. They arrange to transport prosthetic limbs for a Bristol based charity to a clinic in Gambia providing help to amputees. Interviewing a number of experts on the 30 year conflict between Morocco and the Saharawi natives, they arrange to meet with Saharawi ‘dissidents’ in the Western Sahara to expose their oppression by Moroccan authorities who they claim are occupying their land and profiting from their national resources.

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Three territories: a landscape, a nation, a right

2020

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.

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Rofles or graffiti: the non-violent fight of the Sahrawi people

2016

Many Saharawis are claiming to return to war in order to break the impasse of wainting during 40 years. However, the Sahrawi nonviolent activists argue that they are pushing Morocco to an untenable position. For them, the nonviolent action and the respect of human rights make Sahrawis part of the new world that is coming and also they are building a sane society. The documentary explores this debate with activists of the refugee camps and of the occupied territories.

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Tell them I exist

2016

Tell them I exist paints the portraits of Naâma Asfari, a Sahrawi jurist and pro-independence activist sentenced to 30 years detention in Morocco; and of his wife, Claude Mangin, who from prison visits to diplomatic meetings, from filing complaints for torture to shows of support, continues to mobilize and raise awareness of the situation in Western Sahara, and of the fate of her husband, in the hope of his release or at least a new and fair trial.

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Lost land

2011

Straddling a 2,400-kilometer-long wall constructed by the Moroccan army, the Western Sahara is today divided into two sections — one occupied by Morocco, the other under the control of the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement’s Polisario Front. Drawing from stories of flight, exile, interminable waiting and the arrested, persecuted lives on both sides of that wall, this film bears witness to the Sahrawi people, their land, their entrapment in other people’s dreams. In an esthetic that sublimates the real, Lost Land resonates like a score that juxtaposes sonorous landscapes, black-and-white portraits and nomadic poetics.

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Sahrawis, between occupation and exile

2010

From a chronological perspective, “Saharauis, entre la ocupación y el exilio” (2010) explains the origins and key points of the Western Sahara conflict, especially since Spain handed over the territory to Morocco and Mauritania. Based on the interviews with the main people affected by the conflict, among others, this documentary shows the Sahrawi fight for survival in a society and a culture that have been able to prevail in occupied territory as well as in the refugee camps of Tindouf (Algeria).

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Desert PHOSfate

2024

DESERT PHOSfate is an artist film that tells about the impact of phosphate on the Sahrawi community and its fate, including the surprising emergence of family gardens and their knowledge of how to farm in the desert without the processed phosphorus that had caused the dislocation of the Sahrawi nomads from their homeland of Western Sahara.

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Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc

2022

The former French colonies in Central and West Africa have been independent since 1960, but most of these countries still use the currency of the former oppressor: the CFA franc. It was linked to the French franc when it was introduced, so the national bank in Paris controlled monetary policy. Now the currency has a fixed exchange rate with the euro. The link with the European currency strongly influences the monetary policy of CFA countries. And that means the value of the CFA franc is defined by political decisions taken elsewhere, rather than by the domestic economy.

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Gdeim Izik, the Sahrawi's resistance camp

2011

abel and Antonio are human rights activists. They were awoke by the loud noise of sirens and the roar of thousands of screamings. They picked what they could, between what was the camcorder. They switched it on and started recording what their eyes could not believe: the savage assault and destruction of the largest protest camp ever raised in the Sahara: Gdeim Izik. Tried to contact international press but their satellite phone had been disabled. Antonio and Isabel had to find a way to show these images to the world. It wouldn't be easy. They would have to spend nine days hidden in a safe house during one of the most obscure incidents in the Moroccan history.

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Children of the clouds

2007

In May 2005, after 30 years of Moroccan occupation, Saharawi students initiated a series of peaceful demonstrations demanding their right to the United Nations-mandated referendum on Western Saharan independence. The Moroccan authorities responded with a brutal campaign of repression, detaining and torturing human rights activists as well as Saharawi students and children as young as eight years old.

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Amaidan Salah: the Saharawi marathon

2020

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.

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The Problem: Testimony of the Sahrawi people

2009

Morocco doesn’t want you to know what’s happening in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara. The Saharawi people live under constant threat. They can’t mention either the Western Sahara or “referendum”. The situation is known as “The Problem”. Foreign journalists who attempt to take pictures or shoot with a video camera in the Western Sahara are immediately expelled from this former Spanish colony. For Saharawis it means harsh repression from the Moroccan police, who intend to silence the Saharawi population. Welcome to the last colony in Africa. We visited this place. We spent four years compiling material and gathering testimonies from journalists and other professionals who know what’s really happening in the Western Sahara. All of it undocumented until now.

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News from Laayoune

2016

The film follows a couple of young boys in the Saharian refugee camp „February 27“ located in the bleak desert area of southwestern Algiers. One by one, they ran away from the occupied part of Western Sahara. Music is their only weapon in the everlasting struggle for freedom and independence of their own country – Western Sahara.

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Skeikima

2017

How would you claim your identity in a hostile land? How could you live under harassment and repression? How would you make your voice break through the walls of silence? Sahrawi young people living at the Occupied Territories (O.T) are required to study at the occupying country. But a river resonates all over the desert...

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ASWAD: in the Sahara, we break the silence

2011

This report was carried out clandestinely in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. In it testimonies are heard concerning the plunder of natural resources, the repression and the camp of Gdeim Izik. The report ends with the expulsion of the journalists by the Moroccan police.

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Gdeim Izik's cry

2010

This peaceful camp protested the hard living conditions under Moroccan occupation and in favour of Sahrawi self-determination. This documentary shows how the Moroccan military dissolved it by force.

Genre	Documentary
Production Companies	Canal+ España
Production Ccountries	Spain

Forgotten in the Sahara

Related Movie

Soukeina, 4400 days of night

Sirocco: Winds of resistance

Messages from Western Sahara

Free Sultana

You can't get there from here

Three territories: a landscape, a nation, a right

Rofles or graffiti: the non-violent fight of the Sahrawi people

Tell them I exist

Lost land

Sahrawis, between occupation and exile

Desert PHOSfate

Money, Freedom, a Story of CFA Franc

Gdeim Izik, the Sahrawi's resistance camp

Children of the clouds

Amaidan Salah: the Saharawi marathon

The Problem: Testimony of the Sahrawi people

News from Laayoune

Skeikima

ASWAD: in the Sahara, we break the silence

Gdeim Izik's cry