| Title | Year | Director(s) | Details | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You Can't Get There From Here | 2021 | Peter Shields & Daniel Petkoff | 90mins. In 2018, filmmakers Daniel Petkoff and Peter Shields set out to cross the Sahara desert to deliver prosthetic limbs to the amputee unit at the Banjul hospital in Gambia. The film tells the story of a journey that starts from Plymouth and takes the filmmakers across Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania to reach The Gambia. While travelling through Western Sahara they meet underground Saharawi activists living under Morocco’s occupation there. | Trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3wVySahYFd0 |
| Sandtracks | 2021 | Carolina Graterol | 22mins. An intimate look into Sandblast founder Danielle Smith’s mission to bring the unknown struggle of the Saharawi people for self-determination to wider attention. | Full film: https://youtu.be/8YVJKfkDTLQ |
| Ocupacion SA | 2020 | Laura Dauden (Forward Films) | 41 mins. “Ocupación S.A.” is the portrait of a betrayal. In a thorough and unprecedented approach, the documentary presents the names and surnames of the Spanish businesspeople and politicians involved in the economic exploitation of Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa and one of the most violent, militarized and censored territories in the world. | Full film: https://vimeo.com/490703822 |
| Looking for a Homeland: Saharawi refugees at the other side of the Moroccan wall | 2019 | First Hand Films/Barbershop Episode 5 | 25min. Set in Smara refugee camp in SW Algeria, the interactions between barber and clients reveal the story of how the Saharawi of Western Sahara became refugees and touches on issues they face. | Full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctFz35vjURI&t=123s |
| Three Stolen Cameras | 2017 | Equipe Media, Ra Film | 17mins. A Saharawi video activist group is struggling to keep their cameras in the occupied Western Sahara where the Moroccan authorities have managed to implement a near total media blockade. | Full film: http://www.3stolencameras.com/the-film/ |
| Life is Waiting | 2015 | Iara Lee, Cultures of Resistance | 58mins. Highlights the role of the arts non -violent resistance in the Saharawi cause and chronicles the everyday violence of life under the Moroccan occupation, giving voice to the aspirations of a desert people for whom colonialism has never ended. | Full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QzRzm4uFxU |
| The Sahara's forgotten war | 2014 | VICE news | 36mins.VICE News travels to Western Sahara's occupied and liberated territories, as well as the Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria, to find out more about one of the world's least reported conflicts. | Full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju4WrjiJbGc&ab_channel=VICENews |
| Poets of Protest- El Khadra: Poet of the Desert | 2012 | Artscape | 25mins. Al Khadra is a renowned Sahrawi war poetess living in the Al-Auin camp in the Algerian desert. A vivid testament to several decades of the Sahara conflict, we see how she keeps her oral poetry alive and tries to pass on her activism to the next generation. | Full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzGD5xv0rKU |
| Aadat (traditions) | 2004 | Xisela Franco & Noé Rodríguez | 22min. In the reign of the inert; where the landscape is arid and dead and only infinite extensions of sand and stone exist; there are people who build their lives with their will. Forgotten, unheard, doomed to the most extreme and harsh survival conditions, the Saharawi people still hope for justice to be done. | Full film: https://vimeo.com/89087200 |
| Beat of Distant Hearts: the art of Revolution in Western Sahara | 1999 | Danielle Smith | 45mins. Through the lives and works of poets, singers and painters, award-winning Beat of Distant Hearts explores the Saharawis’ collective experience of exile, loss and war and offers insight into how these art forms have played a role in the ongoing struggle. | How to order: https://www.arabfilm.com/item_print.html?itemID=180 |
