Swiss sales company Lightdox has acquired worldwide sales rights to the documentary My Home of Wind and Sand, ahead of its world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival on Tuesday. Directed by Patrick Wally, the film is a portrait of Najla Mohamed Lamin, a women’s rights, human rights and climate activist who was born in a Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria.
Patrick Wally spent more than a decade on the project, with Lightdox saying he followed Lamin’s journey for eleven years. Najla Mohamed Lamin has led a peaceful campaign for Western Sahara’s right to self-determination, a goal that Sahrawi refugees have pursued for more than fifty years. The story is told through conversations with the filmmaker, who gradually becomes visible within it.
According to the synopsis, the film “refuses to reduce Najla to a symbol of a geopolitical conflict.” Instead, it shows Western Sahara through the perspective of one person living with its consequences.
Najla Mohamed Lamin was born in 1989. Her family comes from Al Mahbes in Western Sahara and fled after war broke out in 1975 between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan army. She works as a teacher and established the Almasar Library Centre, which teaches women and children in the refugee camps about climate change.
Greta Thunberg, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is expected to attend the premiere and will join Lamin for a conversation afterwards. Thunberg visited the Sahrawi refugee camps last year, where she and Lamin held a workshop on climate change. Following Tuesday’s premiere, the film will have public screenings at the festival on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. The music is by Ahmed Zain, and the film is presented as a Wyfilm documentary.
Lightdox CEO Anna Berthollet said the film is not really a geopolitical story. She described it as an intimate portrait of how Lamin chooses to live, raise her children and build a future for her community. With Western Sahara receiving renewed international attention, Berthollet said it matters that Lamin’s own perspective is part of that conversation. She added that the company felt humbled to be trusted with taking the story to audiences around the world.
Lightdox is a Swiss-based international sales and distribution agency for author-driven documentaries. Anna Berthollet has run its activities since 2015, focusing on acquisitions, theatrical releases and impact distribution. In a 2025 interview, she said the company mostly handles films with theatrical potential rather than purely factual programming for broadcasters. The company also picked up the documentary Gabin earlier this year, ahead of that film’s premiere at Cannes.
The film arrives with a long history behind its subject. Spain ruled Western Sahara until 1975, and the fighting that followed pushed many Sahrawis into refugee camps in Algeria. The United Nations still lists the territory as non-self-governing. A ceasefire that held from 1991 ended in 2020, and Lamin has criticised Western countries and media for staying quiet on the issue.
With a Zurich premiere, a high-profile guest in Thunberg and a specialist sales company now on board, My Home of Wind and Sand is positioned to reach festival and theatrical audiences beyond Switzerland. It offers a personal view of a conflict that has remained unresolved for more than fifty years.