This year marks the 45th year since the Sahrawi refugee camps were set up deep in the Sahara desert, in the far west of Algeria, just off the border with Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania. The Sahrawis are the people of Western Sahara which was not destined to become an independent state at the time of the decolonization of the African continent. Today, two-thirds of their territory is occupied by Morocco. The camps gradually turned into settlements named after cities in Western Sahara. One of them is called El Aaiún.
| Producers: |
RTV Slovenija, Hupa Brajdič produkcija, Reflektum |
| Director: |
Erik Valenčič |
| Script: |
Erik Valenčič, Miha Mohorič, Tina Glavič Novak |
| Camera: |
Luka Miklošič, Katja Bidovec, Erik Valenčič
|
| Editing: |
Bojan Gašperič
|
| Directors of photography: |
Tina Glavič Novak in Miha Mohorič |
| Others: |
Sound: Luka Cvetko |
Erik Valenčič is a long-time journalist, publicist and documentarian, who in his works reveals the complexity of the Middle East and North Africa through the perspectives of individual peoples. So far, he has made three documentary shows or films that put a particular nation in the foreground: the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Assyrians. As a screenwriter and director, he worked on the films Guardians of Civilization (2018), Kurdistan Front (2015) and Three Saints (2017). The film Videti El Aaiun was shot between 2017 and 2018, when Erik Valenčič, after almost ten years, returned to the area of the camps, which he first visited as a journalist for Mladina.
