Sahrawi campaigners and filmmakers are calling for a boycott of The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan over his decision to shoot the film in Morocco-occupied Western Sahara.
The British filmmaker’s choice of the city of Dakhla as a location for the film, which goes on general release on Friday, has been accused of normalising the north African kingdom’s 50-year occupation of the territory.
Sahrawi journalist and filmmaker Mamine Hachimi is among those calling for the film to be boycotted.
“This is not a campaign against cinema or artistic freedom – it is a call for ethical responsibility,” he told Middle East Eye.
Hachimi co-directed Three Stolen Cameras, a short documentary that detailed the difficulties facing the Sahrawi media organisation Equipe Media as it attempted to document the abuses perpetrated against the Sahrawis in Western Sahara.
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The film was initially set to premiere in Beirut in 2017, but was dropped following pressure from the Moroccan government. Members of Equipe Media also faced arrest and harassment from Moroccan authorities.
“Two of my colleagues, Abdallah Lhafaouni, who is serving a life sentence, and Bachir Khadda, who is serving a 20-year sentence, are political prisoners simply because they documented human rights violations in occupied Western Sahara,” he explained.
“It is deeply disturbing that while Sahrawi journalists are imprisoned for exposing abuses, an international film production can use our homeland as a cinematic backdrop without addressing the reality of the occupation.”
A backdrop of occupation
Much of the attention on The Odyssey has focused on a campaign by far-right online trolls to stir up controversy over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o in the lead role of Helen of Troy.
Nolan has dismissed that controversy as “irrelevant”, but Sahrawis say the real scandal is over Nolan’s whitewashing of Morocco’s exploitation of their homeland.
They also point out that the same security services involved in brutalising Sahrawi campaigners in the occupied territory facilitated the shoot.
Meanwhile, the Moroccan minister of culture, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, snapped selfies with Nolan and expressed his hope it would “give visibility to Dakhla as a film location and not just a tourist destination”.
So far, despite a campaign by a range of stars and activists, including Javier Bardem, Pedro Almodovar and Greta Thunberg, calling for the scenes shot in Dakhla to be excised, Nolan has stayed silent, and requests put by MEE to Universal Pictures and Nolan’s production company, Syncopy Inc, for comment have gone without response.
“As a filmmaker, I find this deeply disappointing,” said Mohamedsalem Werad, a Sahrawi documentary filmmaker.
“Choosing to film in occupied Western Sahara was not a politically neutral production decision – it meant operating with the permission of the occupying power in a territory where the indigenous Sahrawi people have long been denied the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination.”
‘They will be in the dustbin of history, remembered as nothing but cultural parasites’
– Abidin Mohamed Hamudi, filmmaker
Werad, who gained attention with his documentary on the life of Sahrawi singer Mariem Hassan, told MEE a boycott was the only option left to viewers.
“A boycott sends a clear message that filmmakers cannot expect audiences to overlook decisions that risk legitimising an occupation,” he said.
Another Sahrawi filmmaker, Abidin Mohamed Hamudi, said the whole team behind The Odyssey were “complicit” in the subjugation of the Western Sahara.
He added that Hollywood’s attitude was an extension of capitalism and Western economies’ attitude towards the resources of the Global South in its most “grotesque, hyper-realised form”.
“Shame on them – history will put everyone in the place they deserve, and they will be in the dustbin of history, remembered as nothing but cultural parasites,” he told MEE.
‘An act that amounts to plunder’
At a cost of a reported $250m dollars, and coming off the back of Nolan’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, The Odyssey is planned to be the blockbuster hit of the summer.
When it is released in the cinemas on Friday, audiences are expected to flock to the screens, escaping into a fantasy world of epic battles, sorcery, gods and myths.
However, Sahrawis are keen to stress that there is a stark reality that is being masked by the glitz and glamour, one that has been largely ignored by both Hollywood and the international community.
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Every year, Sahrawis and foreign activists host the Western Sahara International Film Festival (FiSahara) in the refugee camps in southwestern Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of Sahrawis live after being driven from their homeland by Morocco.
FiSahara aims to highlight socially conscious filmmaking by both native Sahrawis and foreign filmmakers and has been one of the main drivers behind calls to boycott The Odyssey.
“Nolan’s team benefited from security services during the filming from the very military and police that brutalise the Sahrawis who resist under permanent siege just a few kilometres from where they were filming, but who are beaten, arbitrarily arrested and have their equipment confiscated for trying to make their own films of life under occupation,” said Maria Carron, the festival’s executive director.
She said that last year, as Nolan and his team were shooting in the White Sand Dune outside the city of Dakhla, FiSahara and a range of Sahrawi filmmakers and activists protested, urging Nolan and Universal to suspend the shoot, leave the territory and not include these scenes in the film without the consent of the Sahrawi people.
They were unsuccessful.
“FiSahara calls for a general audience boycott of the film and for Nolan to be held accountable for personally benefiting from an illegal occupation by collaborating with Moroccan authorities to enter and film the territory and then by using images of Western Sahara without the consent of their rightful and legal owners, the Sahrawi people – an act that amounts to plunder,” said Carron.
