Lightdox has acquired worldwide sales rights to My Home of Wind and Sand, a documentary portrait of Sahrawi activist Najla Mohamed Lamin, ahead of its world premiere Tuesday at the Zurich Film Festival.
Filmmaker Patrick Wally spent eleven years following Lamin, who was born in a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria. She campaigns peacefully for women’s rights, human rights and climate action, and for the right of Western Sahara to determine its own future. Wally shapes the film through conversations with her and gradually steps into the frame himself. Its synopsis says it refuses to shrink her into a symbol of a geopolitical conflict.
Lightdox CEO Anna Berthollet described a film centered on daily choices: how Lamin lives, raises her children and builds a future for her community. “Najla has lived her entire life with an unresolved conflict,” Berthollet said. She argued that Lamin’s perspective belongs in the discussion as the territory draws fresh international attention.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg is expected at the premiere and will join Lamin for a discussion afterward. Thunberg visited the Sahrawi camps last year, when the two women ran a workshop on climate change.
The sale lands during a shift in the diplomacy around the dispute. Sahrawi refugees have waited more than five decades for a self-determination vote. The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2797 in October 2025 by 11 votes to none, with three abstentions, naming Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the basis for negotiations. Morocco’s plan keeps the territory under Moroccan sovereignty. The Polisario Front called the resolution a dangerous deviation and said it would skip talks built on that framework. The European Union aligned its position with the resolution in January.
Washington has taken Rabat’s side. Trump adviser Massad Boulos said this week that three rounds of negotiations since the vote were constructive, and he blamed the Polisario, backed by Algeria, for the absence of a settlement. Human Rights Watch reads the resolution differently. The group says it offers no path to independence and fails to guarantee an outcome that reflects the will of the Sahrawi people.
