Fotogalleriet and Kunstnernes Hus Cinema invite you to a screening of DESERT PHOSfate (2023, 58 min) by Sahrawi artist and filmmaker Mohamed Sleiman Labat, followed by a conversation between Labat and Crystal Bennes.

Shot in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Hamada desert of southwestern Algeria, the film takes its title from the fusion of "phosphate" and "fate." Across three chapters it weaves through the story of the mineral — in high demand as fertiliser, devastating in its extraction — moving between land, sand particles, plants, and the displacement of both people and minerals. Alongside this runs the emergence of family gardens in the camps, and the knowledge of how to farm the desert without the processed phosphorus whose extraction displaced the Sahrawi from Western Sahara.

Read more: https://kunstnerneshus.no/en/program/cinema/desert-phosfate