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Director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie “The Odyssey” is already facing backlash for allegedly filming on indigenous land under “military occupation” in the Western Sahara.
After the picture wrapped up shooting in the area last week, the Sahrawi Government expressed “deep concern and strong indignation” that the “Oppenheimer” director’s follow-up project was filming in the city of Dakhla, a location it claims is currently under “illegal military occupation by the Kingdom of Morocco.”
“The Ministry firmly expresses its strong condemnation and unequivocal rejection of the decision to select an occupied territory as the location for a major international film production, without any form of consultation or coordination with the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, internationally recognized as the Polisario Front,” its statement read.
The statement continued, “This act constitutes a dangerous form of cultural normalization with the occupation, and an unethical exploitation of art and cinema to whitewash the image of a colonial situation that is still imposed by force and met daily with the steadfast resistance of a people struggling for freedom and dignity.”
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The Western Sahara International Film Festival (FiSahara) similarly put out a statement urging Nolan and Universal Pictures to “stop filming in Dakhla and 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.”
“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 unintentionally, are contributing to Morocco’s repression of the Sahrawi people and to the Moroccan regime’s efforts to normalize its occupation of Western Sahara,” María Carrión, the festival’s executive director, said.
Actor Javier Bardem, who has appeared in FiSahara before, shared the festival’s statement on his Instagram account last week.
“For 50 years, Morocco has occupied Western Sahara, expelling the Sahrawi people from their cities. Dakhla is one of them, converted by the Moroccan occupiers into a tourist destination and now a film set, always with the aim of erasing the Sahrawi identity of the city. Another illegal occupation, another repression against a people, the Sahrawi, unjustly plundered with the approval of Western governments, including the Spanish. #FreeSaharaNow,” Bardem wrote.
Meanwhile, Reda Benjelloun of the Moroccan Cinematographic Center, a public administrative film agency in Morocco, called the film “extremely important” as the first major Hollywood project to shoot in the area.
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“Dakhla will indeed offer extraordinary opportunities in the future to foreign productions which will find human resources there as well as a geography very different from other regions of Morocco,” Benjelloun said in an interview. “Today, Morocco’s strength lies in being very responsive to demand and also having very efficient local executive production companies that do a great job.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Universal Pictures and a representative for Nolan for comment.
“The Odyssey” spent at least four days filming in the area which has been classified as a “non-self-governing territory” by the United Nations. Seventy percent of the land is currently controlled by Morocco, though Morocco has proposed a plan to give the country autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
President Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s claim to the land and endorsed its plan in a statement during his first term in 2020.
“The Odyssey” is set to be released on July 17, 2026, and adapts Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem of the same name. It has also filmed in Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland and Iceland and is expected to continue filming in Ireland and the UK.
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