The Desert is the Garden of God

“In the midst of life, among people” - this is how the Little Brothers and Sisters of Charles de Foucauld seek to live their faith in his footsteps.

Charles de Foucauld, an officer who became a monk, lived among the Tuareg in the Hoggar Mountains of southern Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century. The Tuareg became his close friends. Foucauld recorded their language, their customs and their daily life, as well as the songs and poems of this rich troubadour culture in the desert.

A missionary who did not proselytize, but sought to work through kindness rather than words, “in hiddenness” - “like Jesus in Nazareth”. On the Asekrem, at an altitude of 2,700 metres, Foucauld built a hermitage, a place of spiritual retreat to this day. His elongated mud-brick house in Tamanrasset, at the foot of the Asekrem, preserves his memory.

In the turmoil of the Tuareg rebellion against French colonial rule, Charles de Foucauld was shot dead in 1916.

The film traces Foucauld’s life and that of the Christian brotherhood, which today lives in close proximity to the Muslim Tuareg.