Saudi’s Red Sea Film Festival Takes Center Stage as Industry Driver Forges On With Third Edition
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival stands as testimony to the kingdom’s unwavering drive to become a film and TV industry powerhouse amid regional conflicts, political turbulence and societal changes.
The Israel-Hamas war caused cancellations of several movie celebrations across the Arab world, including the Cairo Film Festival and Tunisia’s Carthage Film Days.
But Saudi’s rapidly growing fest is forging ahead undeterred with its third edition set to run Nov. 30-Dec. 9 in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore.
In early October, after the war broke out, “we were assessing the situation day by day,” recalls pioneering Saudi producer and philanthropist Mohammed Al Turki, the event’s CEO, who notes that Red Sea organizers at that point reached out to filmmakers in the Middle East and North Africa region for feedback “and they almost had a heart attack when we told them we might not continue.” So it was decided to go forward, though some of the glitz will be scaled down “so we don’t seem tone deaf,” he says. “It was clear that cancellation or postponement was not going to resolve anything regarding the conflict,” explains the fest’s managing director Shivani Pandya Malhotra. “For us, it’s really about providing a platform for the filmmakers, both regionally, as well as in Saudi,” she adds.
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