The co-founder of FiSahara (Western Sahara International Film Festival), Javier Corcuera, returns to the official section of the Malaga Film Festival with the short documentary MARIEM. The film, which fuses real image and animation to tell the story of Mariem Hassan, the most important voice of Sahrawi music, will be screened on the evening of Thursday, March 20 at the Mª Victoria Atencia Cultural Center at 6:45pm.
At a particularly turbulent time for the Western Sahara conflict, with the recent approval of the bill to grant nationality by letter of nature to Sahrawis born before 1976, the Peruvian director is competing at the Málaga Festival with his particular tribute to the artist who carried the voice of free Sahara throughout the world.
Mariem Hassan, a symbol of the Sahrawi people in exile, faced an irreversible illness and retreated to the desert where she grew up. There she composed her last song, The Farewell, and asked for her final testimony to be recorded. The film is a visual and sound journey that transcends time and space, built from documentary images and animated sequences that evoke the memory and identity of a displaced people.
As the director recalls, “we had the honour of sharing a few days with her in the desert where she spent her childhood, when she decided to retire to her homeland to say goodbye. It was then that she composed ‘The Farewell’ and we filmed her last interview.” The fusion of reality and animation allows for the creation of a unique visual poetry that enriches the film’s narrative. “Filming her last months has been an intense and deeply human journey, in which her voice and her story have left an indelible mark on all of us who were part of this project,” says Corcuera.
For the director, whose career has revolved around memory, human rights and music as a vehicle of identity, “presenting this work in Málaga is a dream come true, a way of sharing his legacy with the world and keeping his memory alive. His art lives on and continues to accompany the Sahrawi people in their fight for freedom.”
MARIEM has the participation of FiSahara. Its director, María Carrión, says that “Málaga is a key festival for the cinema of our country and for the Spanish industry, which has always supported the Saharawi people. Mariem, in her songs, also addressed our people and politicians: to the former, with gratitude for their solidarity, and to the latter, reproaching them for their betrayal. We are excited that Málaga is the place where her story is embarking on a new path.”
Javier Corcuera, a committed look
Corcuera, whose work has been praised for its ability to narrate the invisible with extraordinary sensitivity, made his feature film debut with La espalda del mundo (2000), which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival and the OCIC Prize at the Havana Film Festival. His second feature, La guerrilla de la memoria (2002), explored a forgotten part of Spanish history.
In 2004 he participated in the collective film En el mundo, a cada rato, and in 2005 he premiered Invierno en Bagdad, which won the Silver Biznaga at the Málaga Film Festival and the Best Documentary Award at the Los Angeles International Latin Film Festival. In 2008, he participated in Invisibles, a collective film that earned him the Goya for Best Documentary Feature. He also directed Check Point Rock, Canciones desde Palestina, a documentary about the occupation in Palestine seen through its musicians.
His films include Sigo siendo, which won the Lima Film Festival and received fourteen international awards; El viaje de Javier Heraud (2019) and No somos nada (2021), which premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the In-Edit Festival in Barcelona.
