For ten years, they have been highlighting voices from the Sahara at the Pontivy cinema

The Rex cinema, in Pontivy (Morbihan), has been letting voices from the Sahara express themselves for ten years. With the Timilin association (Territories of the imagination of local initiative and innovation), a partnership was created in 2014 to offer, each year, a session as part of the Solidarity Festival. The objective: “Think about our lifestyles and consumption patterns”, indicates Françoise Ramel, president of Timilin.

A room is made available to host a screening and a debate. “It is part of my activities policy to give visibility to associations, so that they can promote their actions. By going through cinema, it makes it possible to attract a wider audience. estimates Benoît Roué, director of Rex.

An award-winning film

This year, the Timilin association will present Deserts, Thursday November 21, 2024. The film has just won an award at the Mostra de Valencia (Spain), at the end of October 2024, with the prize for best director for Faouzi Bensaïdi and that for best actor, tied, for Fehd Benchemsi and Abdelhadi Talbi. In this fiction, we follow Mehdi and Hamid, employees of a collection agency in Morocco. The duo travels through villages to collect money from over-indebted families. “We can come for the history but also for these landscapes, these wide open spaces that make us dream,” confides Françoise Ramel.

After the session, the president of Timilin hopes to bring in Fadimata Walet Oumar, a singer from the region of Timbuktu (Mali). “It’s always interesting to have the testimony of someone from the Sahara,” she explains. As was the case in 2019, with the broadcast of the documentary Miragesfollowed by the testimony of Liban Douale, a Somali asylum seeker, who now resides in Pontivy.

Thursday November 21, at 8 p.m., at the Rex cinema. Screening followed by an exchange with the Timilin association. Price: €5.