Galb’Echaouf

“I'm not going to say anything, I can't talk about it anymore,” says an old man in a tent in a desert. We see a desolate landscape scattered with ruins and piles of stones. It looks like a tragedy occurred here sometime in the past. The old man won’t talk about it, but a poetic voiceover tells of how, long ago, a long night pretended to be day, and that’s why the people disappeared and everything was turned to ashes. The people who were there remain silent, but the cacti and the stones in the desert saw everything. They now bear witness to the events for all eternity.

We come to understand a little more when we hear a woman talking about her life. As a child of nomads, she had to move to the city in 1975. The atrocities that took place are beyond description, so she cannot tell her children. Anyone who wants to know more, she says, must ask the ruins.

The stones remain mute. Perhaps it is enough to know that this desert landscape is in the Western Sahara, where the stalled situation of the territory heavily affects the lives of its inhabitants.