Saudi Arabia Film, Stars at the Festival

The fourth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) in Jeddah is set to once again put a spotlight on the burgeoning film industry in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and beyond.

Showcasing a competition lineup of 15 titles, film festival circuit favourites, and more, it kicks off on Dec. 5 with an opening night gala screening of Karim Shenawi’s The Tale of Daye’s Family, the story of an 11-year-old albino, and close on Dec. 14 with Michael Gracey’s Robbie Williams biopic Better Man. Viola Davis is among the stars to be featured during the fest this year.

Ahead of the 2024 edition, Shivani Pandya Malhotra, managing director of the Red Sea Film Foundation, talked to THR about the state of the Saudi film industry, co-productions with other countries, growth opportunities and the role of stars at the festival.

Where do you feel we stand in terms of Saudi Arabian filmmaking and its success?

While we are championing Arab and African and Asian films, we are very proud of what’s been happening in Saudi. It’s still a very young industry that is five years old. We have been supporting it, and we’ve seen an immense amount of progress. You’ll see Saudi cinema is being consumed by the local audiences, and you are seeing Saudi films resonating at the box office and do really well commercially.

We’ve had very proud moments where we have shown pictures, such as Mandoob [Night Courier from director Ali Kalthami] and Sattar [from director Abdullah Al Arak], that have gone on to break box office records and have actually done better than a lot of the Hollywood films that have been showcased here. So for us, that’s a really proud moment.

Also, we’re seeing more and more young creative talent come ou. We are running our labs throughout the year — we run a features program, we’ve also run a program with independent film, we’ve just started a series program, and we do music and film labs. We are nurturing young filmmakers from Saudi Arabia as well as from the regions that we focus on [Middle East, Africa, and now Asia].

And when they spend time together, they also create very strong relationships and that eventually leads to co-productions. So really our strategy is to collaborate. The opening film this year [The Tale of Daye’s Family by Egyptian filmmaker Karim Shenawi] is a co-production between Egypt and Saudi. So for us, it’s nice to see that this is already happening. Obviously, there’s this familiarity with the Arab world. People have been watching content and speak a similar language, maybe with different dialects. But we’re already seeing different relationships form, and we’re hoping that this will also start forming with the other regions.

Last year, there was a lot of excitement at the festival around stars who showed up. How do you think about the importance of stars for the event?

It’s a mix of everything. But yes, talent is super important. The industry is young, so everybody is playing catch-up. And the great thing is that people are actually building cinemas. The box office is quite strong and robust, and the trajectory and forecasts are that it will continue to grow. So unlike in other parts of the world, this is moving in a completely different direction. We’re allowing the public and the audiences to watch cinema and actually see all the people that they’ve watched growing up, and they’re able to interact and engage with them. So, for us, this is really important.

Also for the filmmaking community, it’s very inspirational to be able to have conversations and speak to these big directors or the talent coming through. The feedback that we’ve had is that the talent also really enjoys it, because there’s a lot of engagement, and they’re just enabling and empowering a new generation of filmmakers and this new industry. So I think it works for everybody.

You mentioned co-productions and opportunities for collaborations. How key are the festival and its market for enabling these?

We’re finding more and more production companies, very high-profile people coming down and looking and seeing how they can collaborate with Saudi. There are quite a few opportunities given the plan for Saudi to develop its entertainment industry and the film industry. There are a lot of ways to collaborate. The reason that we believe that Asia, Africa and the Arab world are important is that in the Arab world specifically, 75 percent of the population is under the age of 30. These three regions are a big part of the global population. And everywhere there’s pretty much a young audience.

We’ve seen that platforms like Netflix and Amazon are breaking down borders. People are watching international content. So, it’s important that really great content gets made here, gets elevated, and then transcends borders and everybody gets to watch it in different parts of the world. We’ve slowly seen some of that happen. A large chunk of the world’s population sits here, and they’re going to be consuming more and more content. So we want them to create more and more content.

What would you say to somebody who has never been to the Red Sea Film Festival but is considering going?

If you’re looking at business, there is huge opportunity here given the trajectory in theaters being built and box office. Also, this part of the world is consuming a lot of content, so it’s also how you can get your content across here and how you can maybe pick up content from this part of the world that you can take across to wherever you’re coming from. Or you can look at collaborating and creating co-productions. Saudi itself has got a lot of incentives for productions taking place here. A lot of studios have been built in the country. And there are different funds that have been set up. So there’s a huge amount of opportunity on the business side in Saudi and the larger region. We’re really making an effort because we want people to mix. We’ve got the typical panel discussions, the exhibition stands, and we have the project markets. But additionally, we also have a lot of different networking sessions.

The other element is accessibility. We are a public as well as an industry festival. It’s great for people to come and see what’s happening. We have lots of filmmakers coming down — Western talent, but also this huge amount of talent to discover from our part of the world. So if somebody is looking at new cultures, looking at new opportunities, looking at where the world is headed, it’s a great space to come and meet people and see and discover some content that is unique. At Red Sea, people can discover filmmakers and talent they may not have [been aware of].