city Jeddah: Last News

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor In just four years, the Red Sea Souk has become the largest film market in the Arab world. Nested within the dates of the Red Sea Film Festival and under the banner of the Red Sea Film Foundation, this year’s industry program at the Souk has been expanded to five days and will run from Dec. 7-11 at the festival’s new home in Jeddah’s old town of Al Balad.

Amazon’s hit reality series exploring the lives of Premier League WAGS is back for another season. Streaming later this month, Married to the Game season two will follow the partners of some of the Premier League’s biggest names, as they reveal what life’s really like for a WAG.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Professional Fighters League (PFL) has forged a major media rights agreement with Starzplay, a leading streaming service in the Middle East and North Africa. The multi-year deal will bring PFL’s full range of mixed martial arts franchises to fight fans in the MENA region, including the PFL World Tournament, Champions Series, PFL Europe, PFL MENA, PFL Africa, and the newly announced PFL Pacific event that will debut in December. Starzplay, which has more than three million subscribers, is available in 20 MENA countries, including Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Egypt and Pakistan.

First images for Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah Saudi-shot action thriller have been unveiled as the production shoots outside the capital of Riyadh.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Kaleem Aftab, director of international programming at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival, has stepped down following a four-year stint. The London-based film critic had been a key member of the team that launched the rapidly growing event which takes place in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore, and aims to become the region’s top festival and market. In his role Aftab pushed boundaries by programming uncensored movies from the Western world, and also from Asia and Africa, in a country where cinema had been banned for religion-related reasons until 2017.

Oleksandr Usyk has been shown respect by Anthony Joshua after beating Tyson Fury in their world heavyweight boxing championship rematch.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi actor and stand-up comedian Ibrahim Al Hajjaj recently became the kingdom’s biggest box office draw as protagonist of groundbreaking comedy “Sattar” in which he played a man whose floundering personal and professional life prompts him to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a freestyle wrestler. As a followup, Al Hajjaj will next star in “Ambulance,” a screwball comedy directed by British helmer Colin Teague (“Doctor Who,” “Torchwood”) that follows two Saudi paramedics who stumble upon a briefcase containing Saudi Arabian Riyal 2 million ($533,300) in Riyadh, the kingdom’s capital.

The media spotlight may have been on the raft of Hollywood A-listers hitting the fourth edition of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival in the port city of Jeddah over these past 10 days, but what was happening in the backdrop at its market was no less remarkable.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Nick Jonas is currently at the Red Sea Film Festival, where his wife Priyanka Chopra Jonas is set to receive an honor at the closing ceremony, but until very recently the actor was in Dublin shooting John Carney’s “Power Ballad” alongside Paul Rudd. The project, described as a story revolving around a conflict between a rock star and a wedding singer, provided Jonas with the chance to draw from his own experiences as a musician to build the character of Danny Wilson.

Alex Ritman Saudi Arabia has been named host of the men’s 2034 World Cup tournament, soccer’s biggest event and the most watched global sporting competition. The Kingdom was all but guaranteed hosting rights back in October when Australia — considered the only other potential challenger — pulled out, but has now been official crowned by soccer’s governing body FIFA.

MBC Studios had unveiled plans for a feature adaptation of Saudi bestseller Travellers’ Hell (Jahim Al-Abirin) by popular writer Osamah Almuslim.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor One of the buzziest screenings of this year’s Red Sea Film Festival, John Crowley’s “We Live in Time” attracted droves of young, eager audience members to Jeddah’s Culture Square on Monday night. True to the festival’s promise, the film, which features extended sex scenes and female frontal nudity, was not censored. Some audience members shied their eyes away during such scenes but mostly reacted positively to Garfield’s latest outing.

Benedict Cumberbatch is at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival this week for the MENA premiere of John Crowley’s tragic romance We Live In Time, starring Garfield and Florence Pugh, which he exec produced under his SunnyMarch banner.

Lauren Coates The fourth edition of the Red Sea Film Festival is currently taking place in Jeddah, bringing some of the international film community’s biggest names to Saudi Arabia for a lavish celebration of global cinema. Among the many attendees was Bollywood icon Kareena Kapoor Khan, who remarked on the span of international guests in attendance. “Last night was amazing.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent It’s been a long ride to get Saudi multi-hyphenate Ahd Kamel‘s directorial debut “My Driver and I” – which is premiering at the Red Sea Film Festival – onto the big screen. Saudi actors Roula Dakheelallah and Mustafa Shehata, who co-star in the film, joined Variety’s Alex Ritman at the Variety Lounge at Red Sea to speak about the drama, which provides a rare glimpse of Saudi society and social fabric in Jeddah during the 1980s and ’90s. The film is inspired by Ahd Kamel’s real-life story, noted Dakheelallah, who plays Ahd’s alter-ego Salma, who grew up in a wealthy Jeddah family.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy is branching out into Saudi Arabia by setting up an outpost of his prolific Film Clinic shingle – which has six titles at Saudi’s Red Sea Film Festival – in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The milestone move comes after Hefzy has been busy forging rapports with Saudi’s film community on a number of projects including Egyptian director Abu Bakr Shawky’s high-end Saudi-set adventure movie “Hajjan” – which had its regional premiere at Red Sea last year after launching from Toronto. “Hajjan” was produced by Film Clinic in tandem with the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, known as Ithra.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent Afghan director Roya Sadat, whose latest film “Sima’s Song” is playing in competition at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival, is denouncing being denied entry into the kingdom to present the film, despite having been issued a Saudi visa. Sadat, in an email to Variety, said she was scheduled to travel to Jeddah, the Saudi city on the Red Sea’s eastern shore where the fest is being held, on Dec. 3 to participate and present her film.

Long-time collaborators Cairo-based Film Clinic and Dubai-based Front Row Productions are joining forces with Saudi Arabian companies Arabia Pictures Group and Rotana Studios to produce local rom-com A Matter of Life and Death.

Cynthia Eviro has spoken out against cyber-bullying in relation to online bullying of her Wicked co-star Ariana Grande.

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival kicked off its fourth edition with a starry opening ceremony on Thursday evening as it returned to the historic Al-Balad neighborhood of its home port city of Jeddah.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival kicked off its fourth edition on Thursday with the world premiere of Karim Shenawi’s Egyptian drama “The Tale of Daye’s Family” and a glitzy red carpet featuring Will Smith, Emily Blunt, Cynthia Erivo, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Eva Longoria, Michelle Yeoh, Minnie Driver, Michael Douglas and Vin Diesel, the latter of whom received the festival’s Iconic Characters Award. Diesel took to the stage after a warm introduction by his long-time collaborator Michelle Rodríguez, who said the two have “been creatively in rooms defending storytelling, people with our colored skin and the beauty of the streets and the people who don’t necessarily live by the rules of others.” Accepting the award, the actor quipped about the star-filled room: “There might be more familiar faces here than in some awards shows in America,” he said, adding that he doesn’t usually speaks so freely at Hollywood events but he felt inspired by the “warmth in the room.” Before leaving the stage, Diesel pointed out seat mate Will Smith, saying his colleague was “having so much fun” at the festival.

Emily Blunt has hinted that a sequel to 2006 hit The Devil Wears Prada, reuniting her with key cast Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci , could be on the cards.