In July, Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, The Odyssey, was released in cinemas. Alongside the enthusiasm for what appears to be a new masterpiece – one which has conquered the box office – it has nonetheless raised some concerns. Particular controversy arose around sections of the film being shot in the dunes near Dakhla, in Western Sahara, a city widely regarded as a means for the Kingdom of Morocco to expand its influence over the contested territory.
In 2025, over 800 intellectuals, activists and artists signed a petition promoted by FiSahara condemning Nolan’s use of Western Saharan territory “without the consent of the Sahrawi people”, noting that consent had only come from “the occupier of the land: Morocco”. This was recently echoed by Mohamed Woud, a Sahrawi filmmaker and head of film production within the Polisario Front administration, who expressed disappointment at the production’s disregard for the reality of the occupation.
Despite criticism, the decision to continue to film in the dunes of Western Sahara appears driven by Moroccan State funding. In fact, the State offers a 30% cash rebate on production costs to movie companies that shoot in Morocco, treating occupied Western Sahara as part of its territory.
This article examines whether international law permits Morocco to attract foreign investment and allow private entities to exploit occupied Western Sahara without the consent of its people. For present purposes, film-making is understood as a form of third-party economic activity carried out in occupied territory, alongside other forms of exploitation of the Territory’s resources by foreign investors. The analysis proceeds as follows. First, it examines Western Sahara’s legal status and its exploitation under Moroccan commercial policy. Second, it assesses the international legal framework governing economic activities in occupied territories. Third, it analyses the potential obligation to obtain the consent of the Sahrawi people, drawing an analogy between Western Sahara’s situation and the indigenous peoples’ rights framework.
Morocco, Foreign Investors, and the Exploitation of Western Sahara’s Resources
As is well-known, Western Sahara is a vast territory located between Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. This land was officially recognised as a Spanish colony in 1884. However, Spain did not physically occupy the region until the 1930s, once it recognised the potential profits deriving from the territory (see here, pp. 214-218). In 1963, Western Sahara was included within the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs), with Spain as the administering power.
In 1975, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its Advisory Opinion on Western Sahara, recognised the Sahrawi people’s entitlement to the right to self-determination. Despite this recognition, certain States’ interest in Western Sahara’s economic resources gradually grew. In 1976, Spain withdrew from the NSGT and Morocco occupied the contested land, driven by the opportunity to capitalise on its rich resources (see here). Since then, Morocco has controlled most of Western Sahara (see here), exploiting its assets against the will of the Sahrawis and their representatives, including the Polisario Front.
Over the years, Morocco has also opened up the territory to foreign companies. A significant early step was the EU–Morocco Association Agreement (1996), which was intended to foster economic relations between European and Moroccan enterprises through a free trade area. Its territorial scope included Western Sahara’s territorial waters, as stated in 2006 by the Legal Service of the European Parliament.
Additionally, in 2013, the occupying power launched the ‘New Development Model for the Kingdom’s Southern Provinces’, aimed partly at promoting foreign investment (see here). This brought massive domestic and foreign investment, with Dakhla targeted by several foreign commercial activities. Beyond Nolan’s movie, two recent examples of foreign investment interest stand out: French company Vinci’s commitment to develop a wind farm in Bir Anzaran, near Dakhla, and a well-known airline’s advertising campaign promoting Dakhla as the “next Moroccan Adventure”. Morocco’s 2013 policy therefore appears to be producing its intended effects. What then is the lawfulness of filming a movie in an occupied territory, under international law?
Filming in Western Sahara: Between the Law of Occupation and Self-Determination
The regulation of economic activities in occupied territories is grounded primarily in international humanitarian law (IHL), mainly the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (see here, pp. 25-44). Specifically, Article 55 of the Hague Regulations defines the occupier as an “administrator and usufructuary of the public buildings, real property, forests and agricultural works” in the occupied country, who “must protect the capital of these properties, and administer it according to the rules of usufruct”. Moreover, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits “pillage”, namely robbing or stealing in the occupied country (see here). In its 2024 Advisory Opinion on Palestine, the ICJ recognised the customary nature of Article 55 and held that an occupying Power’s use of natural resources must not exceed what is necessary for the purposes of the occupation (par. 124), finding such exploitation inconsistent with the “obligation to respect the Palestinian people’s right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources” (par. 133).
As discussed above, IHL contains no express requirement to obtain the consent of the population concerned. Western Sahara is, however, a distinctive case, addressed within both the UN and the EU contexts, where third-party economic activity has been recognised as potentially triggering an obligation to seek the affected population’s consent due to its NSGT status and the Saharawi’s recognised right to self-determination. In this regard, in 2002, UN Legal Counsel Hans Corell stressed that the territory’s inhabitants hold “inalienable rights” over its minerals and other natural resources, which may be exploited only “for the benefit of the peoples of those Territories, on their behalf or in consultation with their representatives”.
Within the EU, the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) position is even more explicit. In its most recent judgement on the EU–Morocco economic agreements, delivered in October 2024, the Court stressed the need for the population’s express consent before concluding economic agreements concerning their territory. The ECJ grounded its reasoning in Article 34 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), enshrining pacta tertiis nec nocent nec prosunt: a treaty creates neither rights nor obligations for a third State without its consent. The judges thus treated Western Sahara as a third party to the EU–Morocco agreements, extending the consent requirement based on self-determination (see here).
The Vienna Convention cannot, of course, provide the appropriate legal framework for assessing Morocco’s obligations in the context of Nolan’s movie. The VCLT was invoked by the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to international agreements concluded between the European Union and Morocco, where the issue concerned the effects of a treaty on a territory legally distinct from Morocco. That framework cannot be directly transposed to private economic activities or to domestic measures adopted by Morocco, including those for attracting foreign investments. Nevertheless, the significance of the Court’s reasoning does not lie in direct application of the VCLT, but rather, in the broader principle underlying its judgement: economic activities affecting Western Sahara cannot disregard the rights and interests of the people of the territory. The requirement to obtain the consent therefore seems to operate beyond the specific field of treaty law and to reflect the broader principle of self-determination applicable to NSGTs.
The Indigenous Rights Analogy
To analyse the issue of consent, it is necessary to identify the subject bound by this obligation and its legal basis. To this end, it is instructive to examine the legal framework governing indigenous peoples’ rights.
As for the subjects, two actors are relevant to the Odyssey case: the company producing the film and the Moroccan State. With respect to the private company, no norm of international law requires it to obtain the consent of the population of Western Sahara. As for Morocco’s obligation to obtain the Sahrawi people’s consent, it is necessary to first assess the legal foundation on which such a requirement could rest. This depends on the legal status attributed to the Sahrawi people.
In the case of Western Sahara, the prevailing international legal approach recognises the Sahrawis as the people of a non-self-governing territory entitled to self-determination, rather than as an indigenous group living within an existing State. Consequently, any requirement to obtain the Sahrawi people’s consent derives primarily from the principle of self-determination, rather than from the legal framework governing indigenous peoples’ rights, a conclusion already recognised (see here) and confirmed by the practice discussed above. Morocco should therefore obtain the Sahrawi people’s consent before promoting third-party economic activities in Western Sahara.
Despite the right to self-determination, the UN Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025) places Morocco’s autonomy proposal at the centre of the political process, affecting the legal framing of the Sahrawi people’s consent. This shift departs from previous UN practice, which was primarily centred on the exercise of self-determination by the people of the territory (see here), favouring the characterisation of the Sahrawis as an indigenous group living in Morocco. However, this characterisation is inaccurate, since the Sahrawis constitute the indigenous population of Western Sahara itself. Labelling the group as a permanent indigenous population within Morocco could instead undermine the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination. It should nonetheless be noted that, even under this alternative characterisation, international standards on indigenous peoples’ rights would still require the Sahrawis’ consent to be obtained.
Indeed, international law has witnessed a growing recognition of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as a relevant procedural safeguard in relation to the exploitation of indigenous peoples’ lands and natural resources. This principle is reflected in Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which provides that States shall obtain indigenous peoples’ FPIC “prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources”.
A similar obligation is provided in the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989 (No. 169). Article 6 of the convention affirms that States shall “consult the peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, whenever consideration is being given to legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly”. Although there are certain differences between the requirements to obtain consent and to consult the interested party (see here), in both cases, States need to take into account the will of the interested group when adopting acts that regard them.
The need to obtain consent, or to consult, has also been confirmed in case law. For example, in the case Saramaka People v. Suriname, the Inter-American Court recognised the need to consult the Saramaka people in implementing investment plans that concern their territory and, moreover, to obtain FPIC with regard to “major development or investment plans that may have a profound impact on the property rights” (par. 137).
The Land of the Cyclopes
The foregoing analysis supports the view that Morocco must obtain the prior consent of the affected population, or its representatives, before granting economic incentives to foreign investors. As for Nolan’s production company, establishing the company’s liability for filming in an occupied territory has proven difficult. Nonetheless, its total disregard for the Sahrawi people’s serves to encourage Morocco’s economic and cultural colonisation of Western Sahara.
The parallel with Homer’s Odyssey is therefore striking. When Odysseus reaches the land of the Cyclopes, the poem dwells on the richness of their land: “all the crops they require spring up unsown and untilled, wheat and barley and vines with generous clusters no that swell with the rain from heaven to yield wine”. And it is on that very land that Odysseus defeats its inhabitant, Polyphemus, by blinding him. Yet even though Odysseus is cast as the hero, Polyphemus may well have had good reason to confront someone who, without ever asking the Cyclopes, had simply set foot on their land.
Franco Di Pede is a Research Fellow in International Law at the University of Tuscia, where he also obtained his PhD. During his doctoral studies, he was a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses on international human rights law, with a particular interest in human rights treaties, indigenous peoples’ rights, and self-determination.