Ali Salem, architect of resistance

Shoot Me

September 2013 •English

The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of a former advisor of Ahmadinejad's, has been living in exile in Germany for four years. When she hears that the fellow Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi, who is also living in exile in Germany, faces death threats and has to hide because of one of his songs, she doesn't hesitate and has to find him. On her search she encounters fear everywhere. Narges Kalhor has to face her inconvenient memories of suppression, hatred and anger for her past in Iran.

Shâd Bâsh

March 2024 •French

De Gaulle, le géant aux pieds d'argile

June 2012 •French

L'Exode

June 2020 •French

Voltige

November 2024 •Ukrainian

Anna, a twelve-year-old Ukrainian gymnast, has fled her war-torn country and recently settled in Montreal with her mother, younger brother, and grandmother. Confronted by the past, the challenges of exile, and a deep need for belonging, she seeks to rebuild her identity and regain her balance. Through her child’s perspective, the documentary explores the reality of life after war, questioning what endures and what is missing, even when one has found refuge.

A Free Man

March 2025 •Spanish

In the 1970s, Agustín Gómez Arcos rose to the top of French literature, while in his own country, Spain, his name remained hidden. A Free Man reflects on the recent history of Spain through silences, lost stories and the role of culture and memory.

In the Land That Is Like You

July 2009 •French

In the Land That Is Like You is a progress on the tracks of my lost past, with the contact of my mother, my grandmother and the man who I love, in a country which escapes from me and retains me, Lebanon.

The Exiles

February 2024 •Indonesian

During the 1965 mass killings to eliminate the Indonesian Communist Party, the new regime banned scholars in the Soviet Union and China, forcing them into exile across Europe. This documentary follows those displaced individuals as they navigate the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany, and Indonesia, reflecting on the traumatic events that uprooted their lives.

Cartas

August 2018 •Spanish

何以为家

February 2025 •Chinese

Lost land

November 2011 •French

Straddling a 2,400-kilometer-long wall constructed by the Moroccan army, the Western Sahara is today divided into two sections — one occupied by Morocco, the other under the control of the Sahrawi National Liberation Movement’s Polisario Front. Drawing from stories of flight, exile, interminable waiting and the arrested, persecuted lives on both sides of that wall, this film bears witness to the Sahrawi people, their land, their entrapment in other people’s dreams. In an esthetic that sublimates the real, Lost Land resonates like a score that juxtaposes sonorous landscapes, black-and-white portraits and nomadic poetics.

I am the other

November 2008 •Spanish

It happens in Ecuador and South Korea, in Italy, in Venezuela and also in Western Sahara. Three men and two women live every day acting against the global corporate order. Their actions are the voices of others, of individuals, of crowds, of many. Those who seek another world.

Aufenthaltserlaubnis

January 1978 •German

It follows Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta as he celebrates the end of the autocrats. Cheerful farewell rituals accompany others facing political persecution on their way to fly home.

Village of Women

October 2019 •Armenian

Only women, children and old people live in this Armenian village, while the men work in Russia. A life with a rhythm of its own, an independent daily life marked nonetheless by exile.

I wait

January 2018 •Spanish

Is already 40 years since the saharawi population became refugee in Algeria because of the Moroccan occupation. While the POLISARIO government tries out to solve the conflict with institutional help, saharawi youngsters advocate for the option of an armed conflict. While they wait, cinema will be their only weapon.

Diaspora in the Sahara

January 2018 •Spanish

Testimonies of a people enlisted on the path of independence. Records taken at refugee camps in Tindouf (Sahara Desert in southern Algeria) and Bir Lehlu (region liberated by the Polisario Front)

Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony

May 2012 •Spanish

The political upheaval in North Africa is responsibility of the Western powers —especially of the United States and France— due to the exercise of a foreign policy based on practical and economic interests instead of ethical and theoretical principles, essential for their international politic strategies, which have generated a great instability that causes chaos and violence, as occurs in Western Sahara, the last African colony according to the UN, a region on the brink of war.

The Sahrawi teacher

January 2011 •Spanish

For more than thirty years, tens of thousands of Saharawi have lived in makeshift camps, refugees in the Algerian desert. Because of this situation, children are forced to travel far to complete their studies. Many are trained in Cuba during a period of more than twelve years away from home. This documentary chronicles the daily lives of these students, both in the desert, as in Cuba, in a round trip full of contrasts.

Tebraa, portraits of Sahrawi women

September 2007 •Spanish

Tebraa is the song of the women of the Sahara desert. Songs of love or lamentation that they sing when they are alone. This collective documentary made by a group of Andalusian women tells the life and injustices that Sahrawi women experience in the adverse conditions of exile and in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.

Waiting for the UN

January 2019 •English

Waiting for the UN is a poetic documentary about life in the desert, literally and figuratively. We follow the everyday life of a Saharawi family from occupied Western Sahara, who have lived ”temporary” in a refugee camp in Algeria for over 40 years. Waiting for God and the UN, as the father puts it.