The Palestinian people have once again been the protagonists in FiSahara (Western Sahara International Film Festival), whose XIX edition held in the Ausserd refugee camp vindicates the international right of return of indigenous peoples with the slogan Walking to our land: The radical hope of return. The film All that’s left of you, by director Cherien Dabis, has won the First Prize, the White Camel (symbol of peace in Saharawi culture). Produced by Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, this historical drama narrates the life of a Palestinian family over three generations, bringing the lives of those the state of Israel tries to dehumanize and exterminate with crudeness.
The jury, made up of the team of the Abidin Kaid Saleh Audiovisual Training School (founded by FiSahara in 2011 in the Bojador camp), has highlighted that “the strength of the film lies in its simplicity and honesty in transmitting the human experience without exaggeration, making the cause be perceived through the everyday details of life and not through slogans”, underlining “the balance between artistic depth and human dimension”.
In an emotional closing ceremony, actress Patricia López Arnaiz presented the award to Palestinian director and multidisciplinary artist Rami Abbas on behalf of Dabis. At that point, the audience was surprised to see live on the Desert Screen, where they enjoyed the film, the live connection from Paris with Javier Bardem. The Spanish actor thanked the jury prize for the film, which vindicates the Palestinian struggle, while applauding the work of FiSahara because “it is a way of remembering our shameful rulers, including Pedro Sánchez who in 2022 once again abandoned the Saharawi people at the hands of the satrap of Morocco, that we will always be by your side demanding their responsibility”.
The second prize went to the short film Mariem, by Javier Corcuera, which shows the last interview given by the emblematic Saharawi singer Mariem Hassan, who died in 2015, intermingling elements of animation. “It is a human and sincere work that is closer to the soul of the character than to the simple narration of her biography,” says the jury, emphasizing how “the camera remains close to the details, transmitting an intimate sense of both Mariem’s suffering and her strength.” Corcuera himself and his assistant director, Ahmed Mohamed Fadel, received the award from actress Fariba Sheikhan.
For its part, the Mauritanian film The Reward, by director Aicha Chej Blal, has won the third prize, presented by the actor Críspulo Cabezas to its producer Mohamed Aziz. In the opinion of the jury, this drama “is supported by a serene and direct narration, which leaves the visual language the main space of expression, where the photography is presented rich in aesthetic nuances, reflecting the spirit of the place and reinforcing the feeling of strangeness and nostalgia”.
In this edition, the Eduardo Galeano Film and Human Rights Award has gone to the film The Sami Song of Survival, by director Iara Lee, which narrates how the Sami people are today victims of colonialist practices in the middle of Europe.
Likewise, the actor Guillermo Toledo has been in charge of presenting the awards to Le Frif, the space of traditional Saharawi tents in which the different wilayas (camps) and dairas (districts) of Ausserd compete in different categories of Saharawi tradition and culture.
The closing ceremony was given by the violinist Ara Malikian and the pianist Iván ‘Melon’ Lewis, whose concert put the finishing touch to an edition with more than a thousand people from twenty countries and refugee camps who have enjoyed more than 25 films and multiple parallel activities. The executive director of FiSahara, María Carrión, said that “FiSahara will walk with the people and the Saharawi republic until we return to a free Sahara to meet there with our brothers and sisters who are waiting for us on the other side”.
The first-person account of the crimes of Morocco and its accomplices
The awards ceremony concludes an intense week in which the general public, activists and journalists from all over the world have approached the Saharawi reality. During this edition, activists from the Occupied Territories, who also took the stage at the closing, recounted the systematic violation of human rights by Moroccan oppressive forces. The Saharawi lawyer Mohamed Hali, Front Line Defenders Award 2025, explained “how repression goes beyond prisons, where more than thirty political prisoners live poorly; they subject us to strict surveillance in our homes.”
Sidi Mohamed Dadach, known as the Saharawi Mandela, highlighted the economic strangulation to which Morocco subjects Saharawi activists and human rights defenders, “with the complicity and support of Spain, France and the United States”. In the same vein, during his appearance, the Prime Minister of SADR (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic), Bucharaya Hamudi, said that “the democratic rights that we are taught in European universities are only applied there, they are not valid for the Saharawi people”.
For his part, activist Lahcen Dalil, from the Association for Resource Monitoring and Environmental Protection in Western Sahara (AREN), denounced how despite the ruling of the European Court of Justice that expressly prohibits it, companies such as Mercadona or Siemens Gamesa continue to contribute to the plundering of Western Sahara. joining others such as DHL, Airbnb or Solena that also operate in the Occupied Territories.
