PREVIEW
The use of Dakhla as a location for the latest Hollywood blockbuster highlights Rabat’s attempt to combine tourism, cultural diplomacy and territorial consolidation
Ministers in Rabat are embroiled in a public relations war with the Polisario Front over the decision by Hollywood film director Christopher Nolan to film sections of his latest blockbuster, an adaptation of The Odyssey, on the White Sand Dune outside the city of Dakhla in Western Sahara, the disputed territory south of Morocco.
The film, despite having an estimated US$250 million production budget and $125m for marketing, is reported to have received generous subsidies from the Moroccan state. Morocco has a well-established film industry. The sprawling film set in Ouarzazate in the Atlas Mountains has hosted a series of Hollywood epics since the 1970s. But Rabat is keen to diversity Western Sahara’s economy, and sees the set at the White Sand Dune as a means to drive tourism.
Culture Minister, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, took pictures with Nolan and said that the movie would ‘give visibility to Dakhla as a film location and not just a tourist destination’. The tourism promotion has already borne some fruit. Low cost airline Ryanair now offers flights from Madrid and Lanzarote to Dakhla. Visitor numbers to Western Sahara have risen by more than 50% over the past seven years, according to data from the Ministry of Tourism albeit from a low base. They jumped from 490,297 in 2019 to 743,133 in 2025.
But opponents of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, including Oscar-winner Javier Bardem and leading directors Pedro Almodóvar, and Paul Laverty condemned the filming as an attempt to normalise and give legitimacy to what they described as Morocco’s colonialism (AC Vol 62 No 6, Marred meeting of minds). Other pro-Sahrawi campaigners are calling for a boycott of the film.
After repeated diplomatic setbacks as a series of European countries, the United States, and the European Union itself have changed their position to recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, the publicity is helpful for the Polisario (AC Vol 67 No 8, Rabat buys influence in Washington, branding Polisario as the Houthis of West Africa). Last week, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu repeated Paris’s support for Rabat during a state visit to Morocco.
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