When the Moroccan authorities announced the construction of one of the largest renewable energy complexes in the world, they did so like a product pitch, tailoring their message to different audiences. Two dominant narratives emerged: unlimited economic growth and an exemplary ecological transition. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies a persistent tension: a green future turned into a commodity is unlikely to be universally accessible.
In The Price of the Sun, filmmaker Jérôme le Maire articulates this contradiction through two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, he follows the Aït tribe in the high plateau near Midelt, portraying their intimate relationship with an arid environment where water defines life. On the other, the film gradually shifts toward a political conflict: the difficulty of remaining both desert dwellers and full citizens at the same time.
From its opening wide shots, the film places the viewer in an almost untouched geography. Herds, wind, and silence shape an ancient everyday life, soon disrupted by machines. Excavators, trucks, and explosions transform the landscape while television celebrates modernity. The coexistence of these images reveals the latent violence of the project.
The well-known idea that ecology without class struggle is mere ornament resonates strongly here. The solar plant promises clean energy for millions, yet turns the Aït into collateral damage. As they lose access to water and their traditional routes, they are caught between adapting or disappearing.
Le Maire further emphasizes how this discourse reproduces colonial logics. Radio broadcasts heard by the community repeat external promises disconnected from their lived reality. Citizenship appears fragile, unable to protect them, as infrastructures enclose vital resources. Visually, bodies are dwarfed by the land or by machinery, reinforcing a sense of estrangement. At times, they watch screens to understand what is happening on their own land, as if the future were being narrated to them from elsewhere.
As construction advances, fences rise, pathways shift, and even wildlife changes its patterns. The community is reduced to witnessing an irreversible process, where progress functions like a mirage.
In a final scene, elderly women break stones to extract lead, a material used in electric car batteries. As they inhale dust, others celebrate clean energy. The irony encapsulates the film’s central argument: the cost of sustainability falls on those least able to bear it.
The film ultimately challenges the notion of the common good, showing that not everyone shares in its benefits. It also exposes the persistence of inequalities between the Global North and South, where certain regions operate as sacrifice zones. In response, the Aït adopt strategies of adaptation, combining ancestral knowledge with precarious labor tied to the very complex that displaces them. The film leaves open an unsettling question about the direction of contemporary progress, suggesting that its glow may conceal new forms of structural exclusion that remain very much present today.
