It had its world premiere at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival,[1] where a controversy started after one of the participants in the documentary, Fetim, a black Sahrawi, was flown to Australia by the Polisario Liberation Front to say she wasn't a slave.

The POLISARIO, avowing that it doesn’t condone slavery and needing to safeguard its image on the world stage to support its independence fight, began an international campaign against the film.

It put out its own video denouncing Stolen, in which several people who Ayala and Fallshaw interviewed say they were coerced or paid by the Australian duo.

[2] On May the 2nd 2007, while filming in the refugee camps Ayala and Fallshaw were detained by the Polisario Front and Minurso and the Australian ministry of foreign affairs negotiated their release.

"The Polisario Front officials criticised the interest the two journalists took in black members of the Sahrawi population, Reporters Without Borders has learned.

Stolen television premiere on PBS World as part of the Afropop Series hosted by Academy Award nominee actress Gabourey Sidibe was initially scheduled for 5 February 2013.

[4] Stolen premiered nationwide on 26 February on PBS, 2013 with a special report carried by journalist Phillip Martin that included an interview led by WGBH journalist Callie Crossley with the directors, followed by a panel discussion whether slavery exists in Western Sahara with Eric Goldstein (Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division Human Rights Watch), Madeline Campbell (Professor of Urban Studies, Worcester State University) and Bakary Tandia (Mauritanian Anti-Slavery Activist).

As the film reports, the Polisario Liberation Front, a nationalist organization backed by Algeria, has been fighting with Morocco over Western Sahara for the last 34 years.

As a result of the filmmaking process whereby the Polisario and the Moroccan government attempt to confiscate and steal the tapes, STOLEN has a fragmented structure that pieces together conversations.

Indeed, Fetim's initial revelation that she has a "white mother", Deido, surprises Ayala, who wonders how they ended "up together, with so much racism in the past?”.

The filmmakers bury their tapes in the desert—an apt and awful metaphor for the experiences they've heard about—and then escape to Paris, where they pursue the story, hoping to recover their material and make public what they've witnessed.

As Ayala ponders this notion in voiceover, that "without intending to, we got Leil and Fetim in a lot of trouble", the film structure makes clear the problem: she's in a hotel room, at a distance.

As it is denied by most North African regimes (in Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal, as well as Algeria and Morocco) and described here by Ursula Aboubacar, the Deputy Director of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, as "a cultural issue that is existing".

This statement is contradicted in the interview on YouTube given to the filmmakers by Mrs Aboubacar, Deputy Director at the UNHCR for the Middle East and North Africa, who clearly states the UN is aware of the practice of slavery in the refugee camps.

The report states the following, page 150 'In Sum, credible sources testified to Human Rights Watch about vestiges of slavery that continue to affect the lives of a portion of the black minority in the Tinduf camps.

It bears mentioning that Saharawis in the Moroccan controlled Western Sahara told us that residual practices of slavery can be found there, as well.

These comments were not mentioned in the film although a senior Polisario representative was interviewed by Violeta Ayala during the Manhasset negotiations and is seen on record in Stolen denying the existence of slavery in the Tindouf refugee camps.

In the panel discussion that followed the airing of the film Stolen by PBS World as part of the AfroPoP series, Eric Goldstein, the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch in charge of the Middle East/North Africa desk noted that when he had brought to the attention of officials in the camp an incident in which a dark skinned woman had been denied the ability to marry, they immediately took steps to remedy the situation.

The Australian West Sahara Association (AWSA) who published the critic has been a long time supporter of the Saharawi refugee camps and the Polisario Front.