Aboard a giant slave ship in an abandoned Citroën factory, the history of the West Indies is traced through several centuries of French oppression. The ship becomes a stage for the people to tell stories via song and dance—from their enslavement to their displacement in Metropolitan France.
On 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.
Documentary filmed over a period of four months, from 25 December 1975 to 5 March 1976, in the area of the former Spanish Sahara claimed by the people who lived there, the Saharawis, a people now mobilised and in arms (the Polisario Front) against Morocco and Mauritania, two states that have signed an agreement to share the territory.
A documentary that critiques the neo-colonial destruction of indigenous African agriculture and economies, resulting in mass starvation.
This film is a testimony. These are the images and sounds recorded throughout the area of struggle of the Saharawi people and they testify to their will to live free at home while placing the "Sahroui problem" in a real context. Ex-Spanish colony whose wealth is considerable, Western Sahara should, like many African countries, gain independence according to United Nations resolutions.
