Filmmaker Christopher Nolan has been receiving backlash for shooting ‘The Odyssey’ in the disputed Western Sahara region.
Filming for the historical epic, starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Zendaya, has been going on in Dakhla, a coastal city in Western Sahara.
Western Sahara, a disputed territory classified as “non-self-governing” by the United Nations, has been mostly occupied by Morocco.
The region is home to the indigenous Sahrawi people who have long been asking for independence from Morocco and control over the majority of the land.
Soon after Christopher Nolan began filming parts of ‘The Odyssey’ in the region, the Western Sahara International Film Festival (aka FiSahara) urged the filmmaker to stop production in solidarity with the indigenous people.
“Dakhla is not just a beautiful place with cinematic sand dunes. First and foremost, it is an occupied and militarised city whose Indigenous Sahrawi population is subjected to brutal repression by the Moroccan occupation forces,” the festival said in a statement.
Read more: ‘The Odyssey’ first tickets sold out within hours
María Carrión, the director of the festival, said that Christopher Nolan and the makers of ‘The Odyssey’ were “contributing to Morocco’s repression of the Sahrawi people” by shooting scenes in Dakhla.
The calls to end production in the disputed region gained traction when actor Javier Bardem shared the statement on his Instagram account.
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“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,” he wrote in the caption of his post.
It is worth mentioning here that ‘The Odyssey’ is scheduled for theatrical release on July 17, 2026.
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