Sahara International Film Festival

The Sahara International Film Festival, also known as FiSahara, is an annual event which takes place in the Sahrawi refugee camps, at the South West corner of Algeria, near the border with Western Sahara. It is the only film festival in the world taking place in a refugee camp. The first three years the festival was held alternately in the Wilaya of Smara, Wilaya of Ausserd and Wilaya of El Aaiun, but since 2007 the FiSahara had stayed in the Wilaya of Dakhla. The event is backed by the Polisario Front, but largely organised and funded by donors from Spain, the former colonial power in Western Sahara, attracting support from Spanish film celebrities as Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodóvar. This Festival is an initiative to bring film as an entertainment and cultural form to the thousands of Sahrawis whose community has lived for more than thirty years in relative isolation in the Algerian desert, being the only film festival in the world taking place in a refugee camp. The first festival was in large part organised by Peruvian film director Javier Corcuera.

The festival has the two-fold aim of providing cultural entertainment and educational opportunities to refugees, and of raising awareness of the plight of the Sahrawi people, who have been exiled from their native Western Sahara for more than three decades. Western Sahara, “Africa’s last colony,” was given to Morocco and Mauritania by the Spanish when they withdrew in 1976. The Moroccans subsequently annexed the entire territory in 1979, in defiance of a ruling from the International Court of Justice. A sixteen-year war ensued between the Moroccans and the native Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front. Under the terms of a 1991 UN ceasefire agreement, a referendum for self-determination was promised, but has been blocked by Morocco. In the meantime an estimated 165,000 refugees continue to live in four large camps in the inhospitable Algerian desert.

Home to around 30,000 refugees, Dakhla is the most remote of the camps, located 175 km away from the nearest city, Tindouf. It has no electricity or paved roads and is dependent on outside supplies of food and water.

Musicians like Fermín Muguruza, Manu Chao, Macaco, Iván Ferreiro, El Chojin or Tomasito had also performed in concerts during the festival.

In 2010, a twinning agreement was signed between the FiSahara and the San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival.