{"id":614186,"date":"2026-09-28T09:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T09:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614186\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T09:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T09:48:09","slug":"my-home-of-wind-and-sand-acquired-by-lightdox-for-world-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614186\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My Home Of Wind And Sand’ Acquired By Lightdox For World Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Lightdox has acquired world sales rights to the documentary My Home of Wind and Sand<\/a> ahead of its world premiere Tuesday at the Zurich Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tFilmmaker Patrick Wally<\/a> spent over a decade on his film, a portrait of women\u2019s rights, human rights and climate activist Najla Mohamed Lamin<\/a>, who was born in a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria. Lamin has led a peaceful campaign supporting the right of Western Sahara to self-determination, a dream of Sahrawi refugees that has been frustrated for more than half a century.<\/p>\n

\n\tNobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg<\/a> is expected to attend Tuesday\u2019s world premiere and will participate in a conversation afterwards with Lamin. Thunberg visited the Sahrawi refugee camps last year, where she and Lamin conducted a workshop on climate change.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Patrick Wally<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of WyFilm<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTold through conversations with the filmmaker \u2013 who gradually becomes visible inside the story \u2013 the documentary refuses to reduce Najla to a symbol of a geopolitical conflict,\u201d notes a synopsis. \u201cWestern Sahara is experienced through one person living its consequences in real time. Najla addresses international institutions, builds practical spaces for women and children, raises her family and continues to argue for peaceful resistance even as a generation born in exile grows older without a political resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe synopsis continues, \u201cWhen armed conflict resumes after decades of ceasefire, the convictions that have shaped Najla\u2019s public life are tested. The film follows her as she asks what pacifism, patience and agency can mean when history seems immovable \u2013 and whether one person can still create change inside circumstances that appear impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Najla<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNajla Mohamed Lamin at the dunes near the Sahrawi refugee camp of Smara.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of WyFIlm<\/p>\n

\n\tAnna Berthollet, CEO of Lightdox, commented, \u201cNajla has lived her entire life with an unresolved conflict. Yet Patrick\u2019s film is not a geopolitical story; it is an intimate portrait of how she chooses to live, raise her children and build a future for her community. He spent eleven years following her journey and bringing her story and mission to the screen. At a time when Western Sahara is once again receiving international attention, we believe it is important that Najla\u2019s perspective is part of that conversation. We feel very humbled to have been entrusted with bringing Patrick and Najla\u2019s deeply personal story to audiences around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe border wall berm and Moroccan military base separating the Moroccan occupied territory from the
Polisario controlled territory of Western Sahara.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of WyFilm<\/p>\n

\n\tThe unresolved status of Western Sahara has been largely ignored in the U.S. and much of the West, but it has kept the Sahrawi people in terrible limbo. Spain ruled the territory as its colonial possession for the better part of a hundred years, but after it ceded claims in the mid-1970s, hopes for the territory to determine its own future were dashed when Morocco took control of much of Western Sahara. The Polisario Front, representing the Indigenous Sahrawi people, seeks self-determination and is supported by Algeria (where the refugee camps are located). The United Nations officially designates Western Sahara as a \u201cNon-Self-Governing Territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a director\u2019s statement, Wally said, \u201cWhen I met Najla ten years ago, I knew this film needed to be made. At the time I had never heard of the issue of Western Sahara. I thought of myself as reasonably informed about the struggles shaping the world, yet I knew nothing about more than 200,000 Sahrawis living for generations in refugee camps in the Algerian desert, established after the war and displacement of 1975. That absence in my own awareness shocked me.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat struck me first, however, was not the conflict in the abstract but Najla herself. I was surprised by my own assumptions. Here was a woman raised in a refugee camp who was exceptionally articulate, politically precise and full of a vision for the future. She spoke about peaceful resistance, about a generation born in the camps, and about the endurance required to believe in a bright future when nobody outside seems able to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAn aerial view of the Sahrawi refugee camp Smara, in the Algerian desert, near Tindouf.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of WyFilm<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with directing, Wally serves as the film\u2019s cinematographer. The film is produced by Shirin Hooshmandi, Najla Mohamed Lamin, and Patrick Wally. Anna Kirst edited the film, with additional editing by Daniel Rutz. The music is by Ahmed Zain. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Tuesday\u2019s world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival, My Home of Wind and Sand will hold public screenings on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Lightdox has acquired world sales rights to the documentary My Home of Wind and Sand ahead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,302464,409,302465,302466,111,139,69,302467,40857],"class_list":["post-614186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-greta-thunberg","tag-movies","tag-my-home-of-wind-and-sand","tag-najla-mohamed-lamin","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-patrick-wally","tag-zurich-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}