Greta Thunberg suspects Moroccan sabotage after Zurich panel on Western Sahara left mostly empty

Empty seats at Kino Corso

A panel discussion featuring Swedish activist Greta Thunberg took place in front of a largely vacant auditorium at the 22nd Zurich Film Festival. Although admission to the Kino Corso 2 venue was free of charge and all online reservations were fully booked ahead of the session, approximately 260 of the 300 seats remained unoccupied, with only 40 attendees present in the room.

Organizers had observed intense preliminary interest and previously intervened by limiting individual orders to four tickets per person, adjusting earlier bulk reservations. A spokesperson for the Zurich Film Festival acknowledged the unusual vacancy rate, confirming high demand had left dozens of empty rows, though the organization declined to speculate on whether the block bookings resulted from deliberate intent.

Occupied seats40

Empty reserved seats260

Occupied seats

40 seats

Empty reserved seats

260 seats

Data from the article text

Allegations of coordinated sabotage

Thunberg, 23, and members of the film crew attributed the low turnout to deliberate disruption aimed at stifling public awareness of the Western Sahara conflict. The discussion moderator described the mass no-show to festival representatives as an orchestrated action, while Thunberg pointed to Morocco as the likely origin of the bookings, arguing that the effort intended to silence the Sahrawi population.

No concrete evidence has been made public to verify the claims, and the Moroccan embassy did not respond to requests for comment submitted by the Swiss press. Addressing the attendees who were present, Thunberg described the broader geopolitical neglect surrounding the territory.

“The film is very moving. It tells of a betrayal - that of the occupation and the fact that this conflict is ignored by the world.”

Thunberg urged international audiences to maintain attention on the territorial dispute, linking displacement directly to global environmental inequity.

“We must talk about it and spread the message. Otherwise, we are hypocrites.”

Documentary premiere and refugee advocacy

The panel accompanied the screening of the documentary My Home of Wind and Sand, directed by Austrian filmmaker Patrick Wally. While Wednesday's panel sat mostly empty, the film's world premiere on Tuesday evening played to a full cinema audience at the festival.

The documentary focuses on Najla Mohamed Lamin, a 37-year-old Sahrawi activist who joined Thunberg and Wally on stage. Lamin was born in a desert refugee settlement near Tindouf in western Algeria, where she continues to live and work. During the panel, the speakers connected the displacement of indigenous populations to wider questions of climate governance and resource distribution.

Territorial conflict in Western Sahara

Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, remains contested between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front. Morocco has controlled the majority of the territory since the mid-1970s and has constructed large-scale wind and solar energy facilities across the region, projects from which indigenous Sahrawis remain excluded.

The Polisario Front, which receives backing from Algeria, continues to call for a United Nations-mandated referendum on self-determination. Roughly 170,000 Sahrawis reside under harsh desert conditions in the Tindouf camps, maintaining autonomous administrative and civil institutions, out of an estimated 500,000 Sahrawi people worldwide. Morocco advocates instead for local autonomy under Moroccan national sovereignty, a framework that has received diplomatic backing from governments including the United States, France, and Spain.