Christopher Nolan is facing calls to halt production of his new Matt Damon-led epic, The Odyssey, in the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.
The Oscar-winning British filmmaker and the film’s stars, Damon and Zendaya, were spotted July 17 arriving in the city of Dakhla, according to the Western Sahara International Film Festival (FiSahara).
Dakhla is a part of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, and is deemed the capital of the claimed Moroccan administrative region Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab.
While “pro-regime media” celebrated their arrival in “Morocco’s southern provinces,” the FiSahara clarified in a statement that “Western Sahara is classified as a ‘non-self-governing territory’ by the United Nations, is under Moroccan occupation, and has yet to complete decolonization.”
“Dakhla is not just a beautiful place with cinematic sand dunes. First and foremost, it is an occupied and militarized city whose Indigenous Sahrawi population is subjected to brutal repression by the Moroccan occupation forces,” said the festival, which takes place in Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria.
“By filming part of The Odyssey in an occupied territory classified as a ‘journalistic desert’ by Reporters Without Borders, 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 normalize its occupation of Western Sahara,” added FiSahara’s executive director, María Carrión.
“We’re sure that if they understood the full implications of filming a high-profile movie in a territory whose Indigenous peoples are unable to make their own films about their stories under occupation, Nolan and his team would be horrified.”
The Independent has contacted Nolan and Universal for comment.
The festival claimed Morocco “only allows entry into occupied Western Sahara to those who fit its strategy of selling its occupation to the outside world.”
“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,” it said. “But ask organizations like Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, or the hundreds of journalists and observers who have been barred or deported from the territory, and they will tell a different story.”
Nolan has already filmed parts of The Odyssey in Morocco, Greece, and Italy. The movie, an adaptation of Homer’s Greek poem, stars Damon as Greek hero Odysseus, who embarks on a 10-year journey home following the end of the Trojan War.
Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, and Robert Pattinson also star in the highly anticipated film.