Red Sea Film Festival’s Lavish New HQ Reflects a Desire to See Arab Cinema Flourish

variety.com:

Red Sea Film Festival has a lot to celebrate. The ambitious event, which is Saudi’s first full-fledged film festival and market, has rapidly become the region’s main movie industry hub and films supported by its Red Sea Fund have fared nicely this year, with Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” scoring an Oscar nomination and Tawfik Alzaidi’s “Norah” becoming the first-ever Saudi film to play at the Cannes Film Festival.

Now the fest’s 2024 edition, which will run Dec. 5-14 in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore, is moving from the Ritz Carlton Hotel back to its original digs in the historic district of Al-Balad, which is a Unesco World Heritage site.

Shivani Pandya Malhotra, managing director of the Red Sea Film Foundation, which is the event’s parent organization, tells Variety that the festival was “always meant to take place in the district,” having done so in its inaugural edition, but only as a pop-up structure instead of the lavishly constructed space they will launch in December.

The Cultural Square, as it is known, features five cinemas and a large auditorium that will host back-to-back screenings from early morning to late at night.