Red Sea Fest & Souk Wrap; Saudi Film Funders; MENA Box Office
This edition of Streamlined is looking at Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF, December 4-13) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and its industry platform, Red Sea Souk; as well as a Souk Talks panel on Saudi film funds, and a brief note on box office in this region, which I explored in more depth in a piece published last week.
It’s been a depressing week for press freedom. Trump suing the BBC for billions; former newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai getting life imprisonment in Hong Kong; and Indian film critics being threatened with violence for publishing negative reviews of the latest nationalistic blockbuster. So you could say it’s an odd time to be writing about an event located in a state that allegedly sanctioned the murder of a journalist. But on the other hand, none of these countries are a homogenous block of ideology where everyone acts and thinks the same. Creative expression can and does happen in all of them.
For me, the contradiction of Saudi is that it’s giving a huge amount of support to filmmakers in the Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa at a time when the West is becoming more hostile to anyone black or brown. One of my lasting impressions of Red Sea will be the number of young Saudis who came up to chat and were genuinely curious about cinema and the world in general. In fact, it’s partly their fault that I’m so behind in my publishing schedule, but hey I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have that kind of casual exchange.
