Nolan’s Western Sahara shoot lets occupied land be “exotic” while Sahrawis face prison

The simple act of holding a camera in Mohamed Sleiman Labat’s homeland, Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, can be a crime. In his Guardian Film op-ed, Labat draws a blunt contrast: when Sahrawi filmmakers and journalists try to document everyday life under Moroccan occupation, they can end up in prison. But when internationally celebrated names in the film industry want to “capture an ideal picture” for an epic journey, they are welcomed, escorted, and granted access by the same authorities that usually deny Sahrawis the right to film.

That is the heart of Labat’s accusation against Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, which he describes as using occupied land as a film set. For Labat, the decision to shoot in Western Sahara does not just produce cinematic visuals. It helps erase the “brutal journey” of the people who live there, because it substitutes an outsider’s narrative for the local stories that can only be told, in his telling, with fear and repression.

This is not a culture-war abstraction. It is about who gets to point a lens, and what that power signals. Labat argues that for the Moroccan regime, a camera in the hands of a Sahrawi is a threat to an official narrative: that Western Sahara is part of Morocco. That framing matters because it explains the asymmetry Labat describes. It is not simply that filming is “restricted.” It is that different filers get different treatment. Sahrawi journalists and filmmakers face the possibility of imprisonment when they try to document everyday life. International productions, in contrast, arrive with permission and protection.

Film, like any industry that operates across borders, follows incentives. Production companies typically chase locations that deliver on tone, scale, and logistical feasibility. Occupied or disputed territories can offer striking landscapes, and big international projects often have the leverage to negotiate access. The second-order issue, according to Labat, is that this leverage can become a political instrument. A camera can be treated as evidence, and evidence can be used in competing stories. If the system sees Sahrawi documentation as destabilizing, but sees big-budget international shoots as manageable or even useful, then the location becomes more than a backdrop. It becomes part of the narrative architecture.

From a governance and risk perspective, this is where boards and executive teams should pay attention. Even without inventing any additional facts beyond Labat’s claims, the structure of the argument is clear: access is conditional, and conditional access can reinforce contested claims of sovereignty. When authorities escort and grant access to high-profile film projects, the production is not just “in the place.” It is being incorporated into how power is communicated. That can trigger reputational blowback that extends beyond the film itself, especially when the controversy centers on who is silenced and who is allowed to speak.

There is also a regulatory and legal-adjacent dimension, even in the absence of new citations in the excerpt. Labat’s line that “the simple act of holding a camera” can be a crime is a warning about the criminalization of documentation in an occupied context. In many countries, filmmaking permissions are bureaucratic. Here, Labat describes them as political. For executives, that changes the compliance conversation. It is not only about permits and visas. It is about understanding how the authorities involved interpret the act of recording, and how that interpretation can translate into risk for local collaborators.

The piece also implicitly raises the question of who benefits from “ideal picture” narratives. Labat suggests that international filmmakers are “welcomed” in a way that local creators are not. That can distort the cultural record. If Sahrawi filmmakers and journalists can often end up in prison cells when they attempt to document their lives, then the public narrative produced for global audiences will skew toward the outsider’s curated vision. In other words, the economic and brand gravity of a celebrated international production can crowd out the very voices that are most directly affected.

For peers in the film and media space, and for executives across adjacent industries that stage operations in sensitive geographies, the stakes are straightforward. When a production uses contested land and those in control treat local documentation as a threat while treating international filming as acceptable, the project can be perceived as participating in a cover story. Labat’s grievance is not just that the land is photographed. It is that the resulting visibility can validate the official narrative while local people are denied the safety to tell their own.

And that is the uncomfortable strategic takeaway. Even if the aim is storytelling, the effect can be political. If your work depends on access granted by authorities, you need to assume your project will be read as part of that authorities’ communications ecosystem. For decision-makers, the real question becomes: are you enabling a visual record, or are you effectively laundering someone else’s narrative while the people who live the reality are punished for filming theirs?