‘Le Cercle des noyés - Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd’

When the oldest among us understood that our destination would be the fort of Oualata he began to cry. He could not imagine that men could send other men so far. (Excerpt from the film). 
 
"The circle of the drowned" is the name given to black political prisoners in Mauritania, incarcerated since 1987 in the colonial fortress of Oualata. This film reveals the delicate work of memory on the part of one of the prisoners who remembers his story and that of his companions. Echoing his story, the sites of their incarceration are revealed in all their nudity, stripped of all trace of this past.