SOPHIE BACHELIER, DJIBRIL DIALLO

FRANCE | 2016 | 50'

A camp in southern Tunisia, Choucha. The desert. On June 30th 2013 the camp closed : water and electricity were cut off. The Non-Governmental Organizations withdrew ; no more healthcare. Yet 700 escapees from the Libyan conflict, refugees with no country to go to, their requests for asylum rejected, have survived in that ghost place for two and a half years. Refusing to integrate into the locality following an attack on the camp by a neighbouring village, and their papers having expired, the families are trapped in a Kafkaesque situation. Should they try to survive in the middle of the desert, or attempt the dangerous sea journey to Lampedusa via Libya ? Their testimonies make us question the strategies adopted to help and protect the victims of current conflicts. How is it that the system which is thought to protect them ends up by excluding the most vulnerable?

Sophie Bachelier is a photographer and filmmaker, graduate of Decorative Arts in Paris and holds a Master of Ethnology. She is interested in how the collective history fits into the singular destiny and turns. She leads a working memory, wandering, exile, trace, which emphasizes the word of the people interviewed, or their silence on the comment. His last film MBËKK Mi, the breath of the ocean or illegal emigration in Senegal seen by those who remain on the shore, wives, mothers, received special mention for Best Feature Documentary Jury Anna Politkovskaya 30 th Film Festival Créteil Women in March 2013 on the same subject, published in 2010 by Editions VMCF

Djibril Diallo is a journalist, writer on Africa and the Arab world, former deputy editor of the website Taqadoumy. Coordinator and presenter of programs on Radio Citizen activist Human Rights. Co-author of the series "Genocide and crimes of complicity in Mauritania", Djibril Diallo was an investigative journalist in Arabic for Nawaat, news site the most read in Tunisia. He has written several times on the camp CHOUCHA. He currently works as a journalist and filmmaker in France. He‘s also correspondant for the Emirati’s newpaper: Al Etihad (Culture).