As one drives to opening night of the Saudi Film Festival in a festival-branded, air-conditioned car, the iconic Ithra building rises up out of the encroaching desert of the Eastern Province like a mirage. The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is a magnificent feat of architecture; it is also known simply as Ithra, which means “enrichment” in Arabic. Designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, the building was opened to the public in 2018 and hosts a children’s museum, an energy exhibit, and a library housing over 315,000 books. More relevantly to our story, since 2018 Ithra has also been the seat of the yearly Saudi Film Festival.
Not knowing what to expect, and only privy to a description of the festival by its founder Ahmed Al Mulla (he used the word “intimate” to talk about the annual event held in Dammam), I wondered if this was going to be a small, provincial happening. But watching a warm, buzzing red carpet filled with cinema enthusiasts, Saudi filmmakers and international industry insiders, it immediately became clear that the festival has grown a lot. One must always be careful with Al Mulla, as the Saudi poet and writer is clearly not only open to hyperbole, but possesses a healthy and classically Saudi dose of modesty which is a breath of fresh air in the film business.
TFV editor Deborah Young wrote it best when she pointed out that “though highly focused, the Saudi Film Festival is sprawling.” There were five competition sections in this edition — Feature Films, Short Films, Documentaries, Unpublished Scripts and the Production Market Competition, as well as 18 films competing for the prestigious Gulf Film Award. “Given the nature of the stage that the Saudi cultural and artistic movement is going through, and because the film industry is still in what is called the independent cinema phase of small budgets, it’s clear that competitions and prizes provide much motivation and support,” confessed Al Mulla.
On opening night, a charming animated short titled Saleeg by Afnan Bawyan, about a lonely grandmother who causes trouble for herself and her neighborhood while cooking the rice dish named in the title, was screened. It proved a brilliant choice to have a 9-minute film, since most wanted to get to the afterparty, a fantastic event complete with food and music on the beach of the Braira hotel. The opening film was preceded by a fun ceremony hosted by Saudi actress Fay Fouad along with Saudi actor, writer and producer Baraa Alem. Their easy sparring back and forth made it all feel very familiar, even to someone who had never attended the Saudi festival and doesn’t speak Arabic.
This year’s Achievement Awards were handed out during the ceremony to producer Saleh Al-Fawzan and writer Amin Saleh. About the Saudi-born Al-Fawzan, as Al Mulla told TFV, “he was from the tolerant generation of the beginnings (the 1960s). He practiced film production and distribution during the ban on cinema, and he emigrated because of that.” About the other honoree on the evening, he said, “Amin Saleh is an iconic and influential writer from Bahrain working in many creative genres; he is a novelist, poet, screenwriter, playwright, and film critic. He wrote the first Bahraini feature film in addition to more than 20 literary books.”
The days, and nights, following were filled with movies, talks, masterclasses and industry events, mostly centered around the Market area of the festival within Ithra. But also upstairs in the building’s Knowledge Tower, from the 6th to the 16th floor, where a wonderful initiative called the Film Criticism Forum saw two days of panels, talks and practical meetings. Highlights included the workshop “Film Curation as a Career” hosted by leading film programmer Rabih El Khoury and a conversation between Andrew Higson, Greg Dyke who is a Professor of Film and Television at the University of York in the UK, and scholar and cineaste Mohammad Ghawanmeh, on the concept of national cinema.
Film highlights included the shorts Somewhere in Time by veteran Emirati filmmaker Nawaf Al Janahi and A Cop Story by Kuwaiti director Dawood Al Shuail, as well as the Saudi features Within Sand by Mohammed Alatawi and Raven Song by Mohamed Al-Salman. The latter was also the Saudi entry to this year’s International Oscar race and at the center of an insightful festival panel on Saudi comedy featuring TFV critic Jay Weissberg along with the film’s producer and co-writer Ibraheem Alkhairallah, leading actor Ibrahim Al-Hajjaj and Egyptian programmer Andrew Mohsen.
What was the biggest takeaway from this year’s Saudi Film Festival? The idea that a festival in the MENA Region, especially one that aims at changing mindsets through film, needs to be sustainable. Growing too far, too fast means that an event will end up going the way of so many festivals in the Region, open for business one day — stops in Cannes and around the globe, featuring hundreds of celebrity red carpets — and gone and forgotten the next. And that only leaves filmmakers in dire straits, as Arab cinema needs to continue to have great platforms to allow filmmakers to shine and to reap the benefits of their untiring work.
–E. Nina Rothe
