Filmed undercover in the Moroccan-controlled territories of Western Sahara, La Badil — No Other Choice — documents a conflict largely absent from international media coverage. Dominic Brown and Peri Nirupan travelled to the region to record what foreign journalists are effectively banned from reporting. The film has screened at over 15 international film festivals including FiSahara, held in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, and the Human Rights Human Wrongs Film Festival in Oslo.
La Badil centres on the Sahrawi people and their struggle for self-determination under more than three decades of Moroccan rule. Through interviews with activists and human rights victims, it traces both the human cost of the occupation and the political forces that sustain it — among them the vested interests binding the French and Moroccan governments, and the ongoing exploitation of the region’s natural resources.
The context is stark. In October 2010, more than 15,000 Sahrawis erected a protest camp in the Western Sahara desert — the largest act of civil resistance the region had ever seen, and later recognised as the first uprising of the Arab Spring. In the early hours of 8th November, Moroccan paramilitary police stormed the camp. Four Sahrawis and ten members of the Moroccan security forces were killed. Dozens more were arrested. Many are still awaiting trial.
In the years since, Sahrawis allege a sustained increase in state-backed violence — raids on activists’ homes, joint attacks by Moroccan civilians and police, and a growing climate of impunity made possible by the ban on foreign media in the region. La Badil goes where most cameras cannot.
Held in the permanent collections of Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, New York University and other leading research institutions.
