Written by new-contact on Feb 3, 2015. Posted in On Location

Spy film Damascus Cover to double Casablanca for Syria

Espionage drama Damascus Cover is set to film on location in Morocco, doubling Casablanca for the Syrian capital. The movie is set at the end of the Cold War in 1989 and follows Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ spy fighting for his life when a mission to save a Syrian scientist goes wrong.

Big Book Media is producing the film and Big H Films is servicing the shoot in Casablanca over the next few weeks.

“I’m enormously excited about this role,” said Rhys Meyers: “This was a hugely significant time in the conflict in the Middle East, post-Cold War and with the collapse of the Berlin Wall when an amount of spies were redeployed to the Middle East, where the theatre of covert operations would now take precedence.”

Morocco is one of the top international filming locations for stories with desert or Middle Eastern settings. Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (above) has been one of the most recent high-profile visitors and filmed partly in and around Rabat, doubling the city and its locales for Iraq.

“We were able to shoot full city blocks with action and the right look with minor changes,” said Tim Moore, Line Producer and Unit Production Manager on American Sniper.

“The action sequences with tanks and gunfire were able to be shot with minor restrictions. The main reason was scale of the sets. From rooftops we could see for miles with limited visual effects enhancements.”

Malta is currently one of Morocco’s main competitors as it offers filming incentives, experienced crew and studio facilities. The country is doubling for ancient Jerusalem in the biblical drama Clavius and for the same region The Dovekeepers.