Film Premiere: Battalion to my Beat, Eimi Imanishi

Beautiful new short film on Western Sahara, Battalion to my Beat ('14), will premier in London next July 2 at the Mid-summer Western Sahara Festival. A coming of age story about a spirited Saharawi girl facing a crossroads between becoming a soldier or forever staying a refugee.

Listen to director Eimi Imanishi talking about her film during the Tenth Annual Dallas International Film Festival last April 2016.

Summary: 
​BATTALION TO MY BEAT is an independent short film set in the isolated Western Saharan refugee camps in southeast Algeria. The cast of Battalion To My Beat will be entirely made up of Saharawi refugees and will be shot in the camps following a fictional script.  The story reflects the frustration that the contemporary Saharawi youth are feeling toward the complete failure of diplomacy, and their mounting determination that war is the only way to enact change. 

The story is told from the perspective of a fearless 13-year-old girl (MINA) because teenagers are reactionary in nature and directly reflect the societies in which they are raised. They are also, for better or for worse, needier of an immediate solution to their problems. Through Mina's eyes and her sharp-witted attitude, the audience will see the camps, feel its constrictions and its destitution, and run up against the difficult choice she faces between war or life as a permanent refugee.