Sahara Film Festival: the final day

At a dusty red carpet ceremony on the final day, the decision of the popular jury is announced and the White Camel award for best picture is picked up by producer Albert Noriega for the 2008 Steven Soderbergh film, Che, Guerilla. The atmosphere is emotionally charged as participants and organisers, some waving flags of the Saharawi nation, take to stage in a final act of solidarity with the refugees. After the obligatory photocalls, the international participants board the waiting fleet of Landcruisers in buoyant mood.

But as our convoy heads back across the expanse of empty desert the mood starts to change and thoughts turn to those we have left behind. The further we drive the more apparent it becomes just how isolated and abandoned the refugees are. During the sixteen year war that finished in 1991, captured Moroccan prisoners would not be held behind walls or barbed-wire fences. Instead they would be corralled into open compounds in the desert. Prisoners were free to leave at anytime.



But in the Sahara there is nowhere to go. Although conditions in the refugee camps are by no means wretched, with all basic needs taken care of by international aid agencies, Dakhla is essentially a desert prison. Yet, as Polisario representative Y. Lamine Baali tells me, what fuels Saharawri determination to carry on is a strong sense of injustice.

A word I hear a lot in Dakhla is "karama". I ask Baali what it means. It is an Arabic word meaning strength and dignity he explains. "Karama is the essence of our existence" he tells me. "The illegal occupation of our homeland is a terrible affront to our karama. When you hurt people in this way you threaten their whole existence."

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