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53535| O akville B eaver | T hursday,M ay 31,2018 insidehalton.com 68%OFFUPTO VISIT US ONLINE AT BADBOY.CA TO VIEW ALL BAD BOY LOCATIONS SUPERBUYS NOOOBODY!NOOOBODY! LeaseBusters.com is the largest vehicle lease marketplace in Canada. We'll unlock you from your vehicle lease commitment... save time, early termination fees and penalties. Call now for a free consultation 1-888-357-2678 or visit us at www.LeaseBusters.com BUST OUT . DON'T LET YOUR VEHICLE L EASE CHAIN YO U DOWN. ARTS Visit insidehalton.com for more coverage While some 25-year-olds are snapping Instagram selfies, Mi- chelle-Andrea Girouar is pour- ing over footage on a project she devoted the last year of her life to. The Oakville resident is the di- rector of the documentary Run- ning Home that will take viewers across the desert during the gru- elling Sahara Desert Marathon. It follows Inma Zanoguera, who last year discovered her bio- logical mother escaped to Spain from the war-torn Western Saha- ra in the '70s. She made it her mis- sion to run a marathon in the un- forgiving desert where she met some of the 100,000 Sahrawi refu- gees, who've never been able to return home since the war in 1975-76. Her mother was one of those refugees, before her death when Zanoguera was three years old. The documentary follows Za- noguera's training regime at Uni- versity of Toledo, Ohio, where she was studying to get her mas- ters, thanks to a basketball schol- arship; her family life in Mallor- ca, Spain, where she spent Christmas break with her adop- tive mother and two biological siblings, and her journey in Tin- douf where she stayed with a ref- ugee family and ran the mara- thon. Zanoguera wanted the chance to get to know the people who would have shared the same fears that come with displacement that her biological mother did. She told Girouar this, at a chance meeting at McMaster University last August. Girouar realized her story would make a great documenta- ry, and was thrilled when the out- come was even more than she hoped for. Being an athlete, and in great shape thanks to her basketball training, Zanoguera won the women's division of the gruelling 26.2-mile marathon in a time of 3:48:11, six seconds in front of the second-place finisher and an hour before the third-place con- testant cross the finish line. It was much to the delight of both herself and Girouar. "It was a pleasant surprise," said Girouar. "I wasn't shocked she's a great athlete." She said the conditions for filming, let alone running, were terrible. "The sand was constantly blowing in our faces," she said, adding it also made it's way into her filming equipment. The documentary is an inde- pendent project by director/cine- matographer Girouard, with no firm distribution currently in place. She and fellow Oakville resident Tori Puras co-produced it. In Running Home, Girouard's cameras follow Zanoguera's, dis- covery of her true self, both men- tally and physically. Girouard describes Running Home as an emotional documen- tary about one person's explora- tion of their spiritual and physi- cal limits. "This challenge moves beyond the physical for me: running this marathon is a spiritual journey back to the origins of who I am, who my mother, who she knew had died, and my ancestors were, and above all, a journey back home," said Zanoguera. As much as the process was life-changing for her, it was even more so for Girouard. "I keep having conversations with people about how much the entire trip changed my life and my outlook," she said. "I haven't been able to shake it, in my every- day decisions and interactions." So much so that she wants to do more meaningful work in the future, and Running Home is just Documentary 'Running Home' changes Oakville woman's life Director takes viewers through Sahara desert with powerful story of love, triumph, overcoming mental and physical struggles JULIE SLACK jslack@metroland.com Runner Inma Zanoguera who took on the Sahara Desert Marathon, pictured with one of the children living at the refugee family home where she stayed. Michelle-Andrea Girouard photo l See PART, page 54