Nato is holding closed-door meetings with film and TV screenwriters, directors and producers across Europe and the US, the Guardian can reveal, prompting accusations the alliance is seeking to use the arts to generate “propaganda” for the bloc.

The alliance has held three meetings with film and TV professionals in Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris and is due to continue its “series of intimate conservations” next month in London, meeting with screenwriter members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), which represents professional writers in the UK.

The planned meeting in London has caused consternation among some of those invited, who felt they were being asked to “contribute towards propaganda for Nato”.

The topic of conversation at the meeting, to be held under the Chatham House rule – in which participants are free to use information received, but identities of attenders are not revealed – will be the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond”. Former Nato spokesperson James Appathurai, who is now deputy assistant secretary general for hybrid, cyber and new technology, is understood to be planning to attend, along with other officials from the alliance.

In a WGGB email seen by the Guardian, it was suggested that the meetings had already led to “three separate projects” in development, which were “inspired, at least in part, by these conversations”.

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Alan O’Gorman, writer of the film Christy, which won best film at the 2026 Irish Film & Television Awards, called the planned meeting “outrageous” and “clearly propaganda”.

“I thought it was tone deaf and crazy to present this as some sort of positive opportunity. A lot of people, myself included, have friends and family or themselves come from countries that are not in Nato, that have suffered under wars that Nato has joined and propagated,” he said.

He thinks the meetings are an attempt by Nato to “get some of its messaging out there in film and TV”.

“I think there’s fearmongering throughout Europe at the moment that our defences are down,” he said. “I see it in an Irish context, where there’s been a push through some of the media and government to present Nato in a positive light and align ourselves more closely with them. I think the Irish people, for the most part, don’t want anything to do with wars on foreign lands.”

Defence spending in Ireland has increased to record levels following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has received cross party support and broad approval from the public, though support for joining Nato remains low. An Ipsos poll last year found, should a united Ireland be formed, that 49% half of all voters in the Republic of Ireland are opposed to joining the alliance, with 19 per cent in favour and 22 per cent not sure.