FiSahara (Western Sahara International Film Festival) denounces the complicity of international media and artists with the Dakhla International Film Festival, a film festival organised by Morocco to whitewash its illegal occupation of Western Sahara.
Contrary to what has been published in various media, such as the Faro de Vigo, the Dakhla International Film Festival is not held in Morocco, but takes place in occupied Western Sahara. María Carrión, executive director of FiSahara, denies Moroccan propaganda by assuring that “this festival is designed, not to promote dialogue, but to advance Morocco’s colonial project of claiming Western Sahara as part of its territory”. Carrión expressly regrets that some of the Spanish figures in the world of cinema, as is the case of the director of the Bueu International Film Festival (FICBueu), Manuel Pena, has been announced as part of the international jury.
FiSahara thanks Pena for having renounced to participate as a jury, once contacted and having previously conveyed to him the deep consternation at learning of FICBueu’s participation in this campaign of cultural identity erasure of the Saharawi people by Morocco. “We appreciate the decision of Manuel and his FICBueu team and we hope that this decision will serve as an example for other international participants to reconsider their own participation,” says Carrión.
FiSahara and FICBueu have collaborated in the past with film screenings about Western Sahara. So much so that in 2023 it was Pena himself who invited FiSahara to collaborate in this festival in Pontevedra, screening some of the films by Saharawi directors trained at the Abidin Kaid Saleh Audiovisual Training School, such as The Price of Beauty, Toufa or Searching for Tyrfas.
“However, withdrawing in silence is not enough,” Carrión adds, “the Instagram account and other communications from the Dakhla festival continue to exhibit Manuel’s image along with other international filmmakers and a post with the photograph of King Mohammed VI that assures that ‘the Sahara will be Moroccan until eternity’, which continues to cause a lot of damage to the Saharawi people.” For this reason and in order to undo the damage inflicted, the executive director of FiSahara states that “it is necessary to demand the withdrawal of these communications and make a public communication about what has happened and the causes of their withdrawal”.
FiSahara urges all international artists participating in this event to follow in Pena’s footsteps, withdraw from it, and thus stop being complicit in an illegal occupation. In other countries, such as Norway or Italy, the Sahrawi solidarity movement and dismayed filmmakers have already contacted other participants, such as the Norwegian producer Anders Tangen and the Italian director Guido Pappadà, who after refusing to retract are the subject of a campaign of denunciation through the media. In response, Pappadà published a post on his Facebook account acknowledging the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, but assuring that their participation is important because it offers a space for dialogue.
FiSahara denounces that these filmmakers have refused to listen to and respect the will of the Sahrawi people, who have asked international civil society not to participate in events created expressly to normalise the occupation, and which are seductively sold as spaces for dialogue and cultural exchange. “I doubt that they would consider collaborating with an event held by Israeli settlers and the State of Israel in illegal settlements in the West Bank, even if it was sold as a project of encounter and dialogue,” adds Carrión, who recalls that this is not the first time that FiSahara has denounced the whitewashing of the illegal occupation through cinema. Precisely one year ago, the festival articulated an international campaign against the filming of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in the occupied Dakhla, obtaining extensive international coverage in media such as Variety, The Guardian, Forbes or Le Figaro, among many others.
Dakhla International Film Festival is part of Morocco’s propaganda strategy to normalise and consolidate its occupation of Western Sahara. This event takes place in the Sahrawi city of Dakhla, where the Alawite regime systematically violates the human rights of its legitimate inhabitants, the Sahrawi people. The Moroccan regime, through its propaganda arm, created this festival to counteract the impact of FiSahara, which since 2003 has been held, in very harsh conditions, in the refugee camps of the Sahrawi population in Algeria because the regime of Mohammed VI prevents its celebration in Western Sahara.
