Christopher Nolan has shaped much of his work around protagonists facing powers beyond their control: time, conflict, recollection, remorse, attraction and the fallout of drive.

In The Odyssey, he draws on one of Western literature's core tales: Odysseus's effort to reach Ithaca following Troy's fall.

Yet one of the shoot's most significant decisions took place beyond the plot.

Sections of the film were captured near Dakhla, in Western Sahara, a region under Moroccan administration yet still registered by the United Nations as a Non-Self-Governing Territory whose ultimate status stays open.

That selection produces a tension spectacle alone cannot hide. Nolan recorded a tale of displacement, division and the fight to regain home on the soil of a population that has endured decades split among camps, displacement and existence under external rule.

In Homer's poem, Ithaca stands for more than a place. It embodies connection, kinship, recollection and political standing. Odysseus's homecoming is not merely journey's close; it is an effort to reclaim a changed homeland.

For Sahrawis, these ideas are not distant legend. They form daily experience.

Exile, separation, longing

We Sahrawis inhabit a situation that mirrors Nolan's narrative: displacement, division, yearning for origin, the quest for return and the effort to safeguard territory and culture. This forms the core irony - a director mining ancient myth for a timeless account of restoration while bypassing a population enacting a parallel story today, on the exact ground chosen for filming.

Sahrawis embrace creativity, expression and cinema. We welcome all that enriches heritage and places regions in global view. Yet we also seek recognition of our narrative, and to be regarded as a people possessing history, expression and entitlements - not as quiet scenery or an exotic setting from which crews depart with images.

The matter is not whether dunes or shores can feature in movies. Nor does creative liberty oblige directors to back every stance tied to a site.

The issue is whether a large global production may enter an unsettled region with approval and aid from the controlling authority, harvest the terrain's visual worth, and then behave as if the act holds no political weight.

It does.

Western Sahara has appeared on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963.

In its 1975 opinion, the International Court of Justice identified no sovereignty links strong enough to override self-determination via the genuine will of the territory's inhabitants.

In October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed Western Sahara's distinct standing and held that EU-Morocco trade and fisheries pacts touching the area needed the consent of the Sahrawi people.

A film shoot is not legally the same as a trade deal. It would thus be inaccurate to state, absent review of permits and law, that Nolan's work was necessarily unlawful.

But the legal record eliminates any firm ground for viewing Dakhla as a routine Moroccan site.

A permit may grant physical entry, yet it does not confer political validity or real consent. Official clearance from the controlling power cannot substitute for the population whose right to shape the future remains internationally acknowledged.

Morocco views Western Sahara as part of its southern provinces and has spent heavily to market Dakhla for tourism, commerce, sport and capital.

Drawing major productions aligns with that approach. A global hit can bolster a territorial claim without any overt political content.

Cinema does not only display places. It shapes them, labels them and grants them a political existence.

When viewers encounter Western Sahara apart from its open status, the missing context sends its own signal: nothing is disputed here; no population is absent; no agreement is needed; this is simply another spot inside the state that cleared the way.

That is not neutrality. It is acceptance through silence.

The tension sharpens due to the ethical frame of The Odyssey. Odysseus receives a face, speech, past and claim to return. Viewers are invited to grasp his desire for Ithaca and the wrong of his separation.

Yet the Sahrawi tie to the land used by the crew stays outside view. Western Sahara becomes a generic vista while the people whose claims define its present meaning are made unseen.

There is also imbalance in who may produce images.

More than just a permit to film

Global productions may arrive with funds, approvals and backing, while Sahrawi reporters, creators and directors encounter limits when recording their own society and conditions. Outsiders can capture visuals from the region while locals struggle to shape how their past and present are shown.

The debate should push the film sector to create clearer rules for work in occupied, colonised or disputed zones.

Studios already perform financial, safety and image checks before picking sites. Territorial status and rights review should become standard too.

Productions should note a site's international legal position, reveal which body granted permits, check whether state support forms part of a territorial narrative and consult reliable voices from the affected population.

They should also label contested sites correctly in credits and promotion. A disputed area should not vanish into the national identity of the state controlling access.

None of this requires Nolan or Universal Pictures to settle the Western Sahara issue. It requires something narrower: acknowledging that directors with vast cultural reach cannot enter an unsettled territory, accept aid from one side and then present the resulting images as free of politics.

Cinema's strength rests not only in what it displays, but in what it teaches audiences to overlook.

Before marking Odysseus's return to Ithaca, viewers should learn whose homeland served as the set.