024 saw Saudi Arabia pitch itself as the “new home of film,” as key movie professionals from around the world converged in Jeddah, early December, at the Red Sea International Film Festival, the country’s premier film event now entering its fifth year.

It was an extravagantly mounted, mega-budgeted, 9-day affair, packed with not just the conventional film screenings and starry red carpets, but perhaps more significantly, a bevy of exhibitors putting up a splendid show. They had named it the Red Sea Souk (souk is Arabic for market).

Based in a huge ‘pop-up’, the Souk brought together such global film production and distribution groups as MBC, VOX, MAD Solutions, Big Bang Studios, T-VFX MENA, India’s NFDC, Qatar’s Katara Studios, Hong Kong’s Salon Films, Jordan’s The Imaginarium Films and Egyptian Media Production City — all under one roof. Other notable stalls included the Türkiye Pavilion, the New York Film Academy, Shanghai Long Shi Culture Media Co, Film AlUla and the Saudi Film Commission.

Every day, the film market would be bustling with activity and energy. Alongside, the Souk Forum hosted an array of workshops and master-classes with stalwarts like Spike Lee, Shekhar Kapur, Dev Patel and Aamir Khan. The objective was to invite foreign filmmakers and companies to tap into Saudi talent and explore the country’s rapidly growing film infrastructure. At the end of the festival, the Red Sea had successfully forged a number of creative partnerships.

There was a lot for budding filmmakers to chew on; be it Filming with a Smartphone, a two-day workshop led by Paris-based half-French-half-Algerian screenwriter and director, Yassine Lassar Ramdani; or Disney animation veteran Travis Blaise’s master-class, titled Building Memorable Characters: Crafting Stories that Resonate, in which the audience got useful insights on “developing unique voices and meaningful backstories for your characters that bring your stories to life.”

At another location, the Project Market would be discussing Red Sea Fund’s works-in-progress. The cherry on the top were Souk Connections and Souk Socials, a rare opportunity for all badge holders and guests to mingle and network.

This year, the Red Sea International Film Festival was relocated from the palatial Ritz hotel in uptown Jeddah to a triple-venue setup in the port city’s historic neighbourhood of Al Balad; and Souk was only a part of it.

Al Balad’s restored old houses, with their wooden lattice windows and use of coral, played host to intimate media junkets and roundtables. Within its walking distance was the grand Culture Square whose auditorium and cineplex screened choicest feature films, documentaries and shorts.

Over 120 films from 50 countries were exhibited in the festival. These included 10 world premieres. Many of these films were the Red Sea Film Foundation’s international collaborations. However, those in competition were strictly from Asia, Africa and the MENA region.

The features’ jury itself was quite ‘global’: led by Lee, the jury included Turkish actress Tûba Büyüküstün, British-American actress Minnie Driver, American actor of Korean descent, Daniel Dae Kim; and Egyptian-Austrian writer and director Abu Bakr Shawky.

Tucked in amid these venues was the Festival Garden with its food stalls and sitting areas and a gorgeous seaview. The evenings at the garden would turn melodious, as musical performances continued late into the night.

or the public, the festival’s most anticipated events were clearly the red carpets held in Culture Square’s beautifully illuminated front lawn, with its designated fan zone serving up heavy doses of glamour. As celebrities walked down the carpet, they were happy to oblige their fans as well as media persons with shout-outs and selfies.

Sessions with the Bollywood and Hollywood royalty, chiefly Kareena Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Michael Douglas, Andrew Garfield, Sarah Jessica Parker and Oscar-winning Michelle Yeoh, were also massive crowd pullers.

Most of the events were ticketed. The ticket prices varied from event to event, depending on their popular appeal.

Towards the end of the festival, a session with India’s biggest crossover star, Priyanka Chopra, had the crowds swooning at her feet. Later, at the closing ceremony, Chopra was honoured with the Red Sea Icon Award. The Barfi and Quantico actor had her hubby, singer Nick Jonas, in tow.

Engin Altan, the Turkish superstar lionised in Pakistan for his cult TV series, Dirili : Ertu rul, also made a splash at the festival. He was joined by Kosem Sultan-famed Nurgül Ye ilçay, his co-star in the documentary series, Tales on the Banks of the Bosphorus, which premiered at the festival. A joint production of Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey, Tales... celebrates the global success of Turkish TV drama, or “dizi,” as it’s called in vernacular. It also takes the viewers behind the scenes of some of Turkey’s best-loved shows.

This year, there were fewer entries from India, compared to the RSIFF’s previous editions. Of these, Farhan Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s feature, Superboys of Malegaon, attracted spotlight for being a delightful adaptation of 2008’s award-winning documentary by Faiza Khan, titled Supermen of Malegaon.

Andrew Garfield’s weepie, We Live in Time; and Johnny Depp’s directorial venture, Modi, Three Days on the Wings of Madness, were some of the other important red-carpet premieres. Modi…, a haunting drama based on the life of the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani in the Paris of 1916, brought the festival to a dizzying close.

arlier, Karim Shenawi’s The Tale of Daye’s Family opened the festival with a bang. The critics showered praise on the young Saudi filmmaker, calling his feature a milestone in the history of country’s fledgling cinema industry.

The Tale… was part of The Arab Spectacular, which showcased the best of Saudi cinema. Other titles in the segment included Lail Nahar, Hobal, Front Row; and Abdo & Saneya, an Egyptian-American silent movie shot in black and white.

While the festival rolled out a number of international hits, it also offered some genre-defying features, thought-provoking documentaries and stellar shorts — both in and out of competition. Prominent among these were Dreaming of Lions, an absurdist tragi-comedy from Portugal; and Yalla Parkour, Areeb Zuatir’s poignant documentary about a self-taught parkour player in the war-torn Gaza who rises to become an international athlete, only to meet an unfortunate and untimely end.

Lumière, Le Cinéma, Cannes Film Festival head Thierry Fremaux’s documentary which collates the ‘films’ shot by the famous Lumière brothers in the earliest days of cinema when camera — or, rather, the cinematograph — was a marvel, proved to be another festival favourite.

Eventually, Red Path, a Tunisian feature by Lotfi Achour which traces the journey “into the wounded psyche of a child in a war zone” won the Golden Yusr for Best Feature Film. Achour also received the Best Director award. Jury head and Oscar-winning US filmmaker Spike Lee presented the trophy.

The Silver Yusr went to Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown. A French-German-British-Greek-Qatari-Saudi collaboration, the feature is about the predicament of a Palestinian refugee in Athens.

The Asharq Best Documentary was bagged by State of Silence, Santiago Maza’s rousing critique on media censorship and “narco-politics” in Mexico. Hatch, a Canadian-Iranian co-production, was declared the Golden Yusr Best Short Film.

The RSIFF ‘24 also honoured Viola Davis, Emily Blunt, Mona Zaki, Aamir Khan and Vin Diesel as “prominent cinematic figures who contributed to shaping the history of cinema as we know it today and immortalised it in the hearts of the masses.”

The RSIFF is a nod to film professionals across the globe. For a country where cinema was banned for the longest time — until six years ago, to be precise — to have come up with over 600 screens within this brief period, and to have instituted the Red Sea Film Foundation with its flagship initiatives such as the Red Sea Fund, Souk, Labs and Festival, says a lot for Saudi Arabia’s growing profile as a film hub.

Barely five years old, the RSIFF is still quite young. Yet it’s grown amazingly into one of the most popular and prestigious film festivals of the world. As Jomana Al-Rashid, the chairwoman of the Red Sea Film Foundation, said on the awards night, “Over the past eight days, we have celebrated the transformative power of cinema and championed diverse narratives from across the globe.”

The writer is a staff member