A long prelude
Saudi cinema's first local film was produced by Saudi Aramco in 1950. In 2012 Haifa al-Mansour's Wadjda won three awards at the Venice International Film Festival, the first Saudi feature to win there.
Cinemas reopened in the Kingdom in 2018, and by 2023 there were about 66 cinemas in 20 cities, with 607 screens and 62,530 seats. The sector is supervised by the Film Commission of the Ministry of Culture.
The festival
The Ministry of Culture announced the Red Sea International Film Festival in 2019 and entrusted it to the Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation. It runs for ten days in the historic district of Jeddah; its first edition showed 138 films from 67 countries, 27 of them new Saudi films.
The fourth edition opened on 5 December 2024 under the theme The New Home of Film, at the festival's new headquarters in al-Balad, with 122 films by filmmakers from 85 countries. Around it sit the Red Sea Souk film market, the Red Sea Lodge development programme and the Red Sea Fund, which backs Saudi, Arab and African directors.