Under the Saharan skies, Sahrawi families sit on the sand to watch a film during an open-air screening of the FiSahara Human Rights film festival in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Ausserd in the southern Algerian desert. Foreign filmmakers and cultural activists also attend the festival, which celebrated its 18th edition in May 2024. The festival highlights the human rights and social situation of the Sahrawi people and of the refugees who have lived in the camps in the desert for several decades. The festival has become a platform for Sahrawi filmmakers and activists reflecting on the human rights situation of the Sahrawi people living in the desert camps and those who live in the part of the territory controlled by Morocco in what is often referred to as "Africa's last colony".

Sahrawi human rights defender Mina Baali sits on the front row during the opening screening of the FiSahara Human Rights Film Festival in the Sahrawi refugee camp of Ausserd. The opening film “Unsubmissive” (Insumisas, directed by Laura Dauden and Miguel Angel Herrera) features a group of Sahrawi women including herself who have fought for the independence of Western Sahara at local and international levels. Baali travelled from Western Sahara to the Ausserd refugee camp for the film screening, risking detention from the Moroccan authorities on her return home. According to a statement submitted by Right Livelihood Award Foundation at the UN Human Rights Council in 2024, “Anyone expressing peaceful dissent in Western Sahara, is likely to endure severe violations of civil and political rights, including repression from Moroccan authorities, facing police surveillance, smear campaigns, and house arrests. Peaceful demonstrations are systematically hindered by street blockades, and activists encounter harsh repression from police and paramilitaries.”

Sahrawi youth meet near a community centre in Ausserd refugee camp on an evening during the Fisahara film festival. Life in the camps offers little opportunities for work, education or entertainment and the yearly festival represents an opportunity to meet and socialize. For local filmmakers, it is also an opportunity to screen their projects and approach the human rights situation in the camps from a creative perspective that can be shared with the community and international audiences.

A group of young women meet near a community centre in Ausserd refugee camp before a screening at the FiSahara film festival. The yearly cultural event also represents a moment to honour the resilience of the 200,000 Sahrawis who live in the refugee camps and the generations who came before them, and to highlight the challenges they face and their struggle for autonomy.

A car graveyard near the dunes in the outskirts of Ausserd refugee camp.

A panoramic view of Ausserd refugee camp, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps located in southwestern Algeria. It was founded in the second half of the 1970s for Sahrawi people who fled their homeland following the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. It is part of a group of camps run by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and supported by international humanitarian aid. Located in an area of extreme weather conditions in the Sahara Desert, the camps are affected by lack of water, food, sanitation, health and education. Ausserd was also the location of the 18th edition of the FiSahara Human Rights Film Festival in May 2024.

Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali enters the community centre at the Ausserd Sahrawi refugee camp, during the 18th edition of FiSahara film festival. Ghali addressed the media and festival attendants wearing military clothes, as the ceasefire with Morocco had been broken in 2020 after a 29-year long agreement between Morocco and the Polisario Front. Ghali was part of the foundation of Polisario Front in 1973 and has been a leader of the Sahrawi liberation movement since the 1970s.

Three Sahrawi ladies take pictures with their phones from a sand dune during the closing event of the 18th edition of the FiSahara Human Rights film festival in the outskirts of the Sahrawi refugee camps in the southern Algerian desert. The festival highlights the human rights and social situation of the Sahrawi people and of the refugees who have lived in the camps in the desert for several decades. The festival has become a platform for Sahrawi filmmakers and activists reflecting on the human rights situation of the Sahrawi people living in the desert camps and those who live in the part of the territory controlled by Morocco in what is often referred to as "Africa's last colony".

Palestinian producer Ahmad Al-Bazz receives the award for best film at the 18th edition of the FiSahara Human Rights Film Festival in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria for the feature film 200 Meters, directed by Ameen Nayfeh, about a Palestinian father trying to cross the separation wall to reach his injured son in the West Bank. The award is a female white camel, a symbol of peace for Sahrawis. Traditionally, the winner of the best film award donates the camel to the local family who has hosted the filmmaker during the festival.

A military checkpoint in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert. Beyond lies Morocco's so-called 'wall of shame,' a defensive 2700 kilometre long wall built by the Moroccan government in the 1980s, around the 90% of the Western Sahara that it controls. The area around the wall is one of the territories with the largest number of landmines in the world, with more than 5 million according to the UN, and close to where the fighting resumed between Morocco and Polisario.