Lost Land – Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd. Some politicians enjoy talking about walls; they seem to be all the rage. The most recent example would have to be American president Donald Trump’s obsession with building a wall along the US-Mexico border; since the second intifada in 2000, Palestinians have found themselves trapped by the Israel West Bank barrier; and, not so far from home, in the European Union – facing the worst refugee crisis since World War Two – walls have mushroomed despite the Schengen Agreement’s supposed abolishing of internal borders.
Lost Land, or Territoire Perdu, a documentary by Belgian writer and director Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, sheds light on a lesser known, but equally oppressive, wall: el hisam – 'the belt' in Arabic.
El hisam is the word used to refer to the wall built by Moroccans in the Western Sahara. It stretches over 2,400 km and cuts the Sahrawi territory into two parts: one part is occupied by Morocco and the other is controlled by the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army.
