"Western cinema has often been complicit in mining stories and immaterial culture from the global south at a scale no smaller than the material resources mined by the western colonial industrial complex," he wrote.
International film crews "parachute in, shoot our faces, clothing, dunes and material culture, then fly off," gaining prestige and awards while Sahrawis remain silenced.
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Labat noted that Nolan did not seek Sahrawi consent or consider the ethics of legitimizing Morocco's occupation.
"He is actively participating in a state-sponsored PR campaign designed to legitimize an illegal occupation," Labat said.
Under international law, using resources of a non-self-governing territory without the consent of its Indigenous people is illegal, he added.
Morocco weaponizes cinema to whitewash its occupation, courting foreign film crews while denying Sahrawis the right to film and express themselves.
This erasure is parallel to other processes of displacement and replacement, including flooding the territory with Moroccan settlers and cultural symbols.
"Film-makers, in this context, are not neutral agents; their tools and positions can enable politics of erasure," Labat wrote.
Audiences coming to see "The Odyssey" deserve to know the ethics behind the film's production, he said.
"We the Sahrawi do not want our homeland to be the sanitized backdrop for western epics.
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We want to tell our own stories, shoot our own films and decide for ourselves," Labat concluded.
