Christopher Nolan criticised for filming in occupied Western Sahara city

The Guardian

4 days ago

The organisers of the Western Sahara international film festival (FiSahara) have criticised Christopher Nolan for shooting part of his adaptation of the Odyssey in a Western Saharan city that has been under Moroccan occupation for 50 years, warning the move could serve to normalise decades of repression.
The British-American film-maker's take on Homer's epic, which stars Matt Damon, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o and Anne Hathaway, is due to be released on 17 July 2026.
According to the Hollywood studio Universal, which is backing the project, the film will be 'a mythic action epic shot across the world' made 'using brand new Imax film technology'.
But the decision to film in the Western Saharan coastal city of Dakhla has provoked fierce criticism from Sahrawi activists and those who were forced to live under occupation or to go into exile after Morocco annexed the country following the withdrawal of its former colonial power, Spain, in 1976.
The UN classifies Western Sahara as a 'non-self-governing territory'. In a report last year, the UN secretary-general noted that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had not been granted access to the territory since 2015, adding that OHCHR 'continued to receive allegations relating to human rights violations, including intimidation, surveillance and discrimination against Sahrawi individuals particularly when advocating for self-determination'.
In its most recent country report, Amnesty International said that the 'authorities continued to restrict dissent and the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly in Western Sahara'. Reporters Without Borders has described Western Sahara as a 'desert for journalists' and said that 'torture, arrests, physical abuse, persecution, intimidation, harassment, slander, defamation, technological sabotage, and lengthy prison sentences are daily fare for Sahrawi journalists'.
Last month the UK suggested it supported a proposal for Western Sahara to remain under Rabat's sovereignty but with a degree of self-rule.
FiSahara's organisers say the recent presence of Nolan's high-profile cast and crew in Dakhla will help whitewash the Moroccan occupation and normalise the repression.
The festival's directors said that while Dakhla was 'a beautiful location with cinematic sand dunes', it was, 'first and foremost … an occupied and militarised city whose indigenous Sahrawi population is subjected to brutal repression' by Moroccan occupation forces.
'By filming part of The Odyssey in an occupied territory … Nolan and his team, perhaps unknowingly and unwittingly, are contributing to Morocco's repression of the Sahrawi people and to the Moroccan regime's efforts to normalise its occupation of Western Sahara,' said María Carrión, the festival's executive director.
'We are sure that if they understood the full implications of filming a high-profile film in a territory whose Indigenous peoples cannot make their own films about their stories under occupation, Nolan and his team would be horrified.'
FiSahara said it was calling on Nolan and his crew and cast to 'stand in solidarity with the Sahrawi people who have been under military occupation for 50 years and who are routinely imprisoned and tortured for their peaceful struggle for self-determination'.
Carrión said Morocco was keen to control how its occupation was perceived abroad, and used tourism and culture to project a distorted view of life in Western Sahara.
'Morocco only allows entry into occupied Western Sahara to those who fit its strategy of selling its occupation to the outside world,' she said. 'Tourists who go to Moroccan-built and -owned resorts to practise kitesurfing, companies willing to participate in its plundering of natural resources, journalists willing to toe its line, and high-profile visitors like Nolan and his team who help Morocco sell the narrative that Western Sahara is part of Morocco and that the Sahrawis are content to live under its rule are given the red carpet treatment.'
But she said Amnesty International, the UN commissioner for human rights, and 'the hundreds of journalists and observers who have been barred or deported from the territory' would tell 'a very different story'.
The Guardian has contacted Nolan's representatives for a response, but the director has yet to comment.
FiSahara, which was founded in 2004, is held in Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert. Labelled 'the Cannes of the desert', it aims to use film to 'entertain, convey knowledge and empower refugees from the Western Sahara'.