Festival In Focus: Saudi Film Festival Director Ahmed Almulla Talks Underground Beginnings & Cinema Dreams As Event Marks 10th Anniversary

Melanie Goodfellow
·7 min read
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Just over six years have passed since Saudi Arabia announced the lifting of its 35-year cinema ban as part of a strategy to open up the country and move its economy away from a reliance on oil.

In a sign that things were already bubbling prior to the Ministry of Culture’s official announcement in December 2017, the country’s Saudi Film Festival (SFF), taking place in the Eastern Province city of Dhahran, will mark its 10th anniversary from May 2 to 9.

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The event grew out of under-the-radar screenings in the early 2000s at a local culture association of arthouse DVDs, subtitled into Arabic by an underground outfit.

“We were fighting to screen films in public,” recounts SFF’s founding director Ahmed Almulla, the artist and poet who spearheaded the screenings. “Things changed in the blink of eye. It’s a revolution, what’s happened in Saudi Arabia with art and culture.”

“Our filmmakers were dreamers. They made their films underground and then went outside the country to screen them but couldn’t talk about the experience when they returned. I was a dreamer too.”

The early screenings ran in fits and starts and then finally began to take shape as a festival in 2014.

Program manager Nada Alhaidan, who connected with the festival as a volunteer in 2016, recalls her first year at the event.

“There was a great atmosphere. It was exciting to be with people who shared the same interest and passion for film,” she says.

Almulla converted a small theatre into a makeshift cinema for the early editions.

“It was in a very, very small space. There was only a stage, no screen or projector. Ahmed Almulla brought the projector, but people didn’t care that technical aspects weren’t perfect… it was more about the experience.”

2022 edition of Saudi Film Festival at King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture

Today, the festival unfolds at Dhahran’s state-of-the-art King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, known locally as ITHRA, which opened in 2016.

Dominating the local skyline, the building was designed by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta, which took inspiration from the shapes of the oil-bearing rocks on which Saudi Arabia’s modern wealth is built for the exterior.

For the first time, the festival will also hold events in the new Al-Khobar Cinematheque, in the neighboring city.

“We’ll launch the cinematheque during the festival. It will be a hub for cinema with year-round activities, with an archive, library, publishing label, arthouse screenings, museum, a food court, studios and exhibition space,” says Almulla, suggesting it is the first venue of its kind in the Arab world.

The cinematheque will also be the administrative home to SFF’s parent body, the Saudi Cinema Association, which launched at the end of last year as an independent NGO with an elected board to represent the interests of cinema professionals, with director Hana Al Omair as its head.

SFF plays a different role from the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah in December, which launched in 2021 with the aim of putting Saudi Arabia on the international map.

“Our main focus is Saudi filmmakers, but in the last three years we have also opened up the competition to the Gulf states, including Iraq and Yemen as well as Bahrain, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman and Kuwait,” says Almulla.

He says that there is a cooperative relationship between the two events: “From the first edition, we’ve been collaborating and sharing information on Saudi cinema. Saudi is a huge country with different cultures, and we need more than one, or even two, film festivals.”

Titles in main feature competition this year span Saudi films Fever Dream by Faris Godus, Hajjan by Abu Bakr Shawky, I Am Al Ittihad by Hamzah Tarzan, It’s Always That Feeling by Gigi Hozimah and Within Sand by Mohammed Alatawi as Bahraini film Rose Water by Mahmood Alshakh and Emirati feature Three by Nayla Al Khaja.

The key draw for the country’s emerging filmmaking community is the industry program of workshops, masterclasses and panel talks as well as the production market, which will showcase 17 short and 13 feature projects this year.

“We keep people together, day and night. A big part of the event is engagement, networking and talking. We designed it in this way because we know that in Saudi there in no network for filmmakers because it’s so new… The Saudi Film Festival is a key meeting for them,” says Almulla.

Alhaidan – who oversees the program from A to Z, says the event’s success stems partly from the SFF’s close relationship with the local film community.

“We see the gaps and we build our program to fill the gaps,” she says.

Feature projects in the production market mix include Do Re Mimi from Saudi star Fatima AlBanawi, who is known for roles in Barakah Meets Barakah, Route 10 and Fever Dream and has just made her directorial debut Basma which is set to launch soon on Netflix.

Nora Aboushousha, who recently made waves with her taboo-breaking, female-focused show Crashing Eid, will present her feature project Layla’s Wolf.

Other emerging directors in the mix include Mansour Assad, whose debut feature Slave won SFF’s Golden Palm prizes for Best Film, Screenplay and Editing in 2023. He is participating with second feature project Saqr AlUla, which translates as AlUla Falcon.

Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha (Behind The Mountain, Hedi), Saudi Arabian producer Almotaz Aljefri (Naga, Route 10, Junoon) and Karim Aitouna (A Place Under The Sun) will preside over the production market jury.

SFF is also increasingly bringing in international experts to share their experience and advice with the local filmmaking community.

Speakers this year will include Jordanian actor Munther Rayahneh (The Alleys) who will share his advice on acting for the big screen; VFX expert Paul Arion (Oppenheimer, One Piece), who will talk about how indie productions can integrate special effects; editor Ihab Gohar, whose credits include the local hit Sattar, and animation artist and director Travis Blaise (Super Pets, Adventures in Wonder Park).

For the first time this year, SFF will also run a territory-based focus, the final details of which have yet to be announced.

“We’re starting with Indian cinema, not Bollywood, but rather India’s independent cinema.  I’m keen to look at Asia because most our filmmakers know about film from the West, but not so much about the cinema of our neighbors,” says Almulla.

He also points to the relative proximity of the Eastern Province to India, with Dhahran just a four-hour flight from Mumbai, as well as the sizeable Indian community in the region.

Other initiatives include a genre focus which will put the spotlight on sci-fi cinema, after an inaugural exploration of comedy last year.

“As part of the program, we’ll be screening a selection of sci-fi films from Canada, South Africa and Britain. It’s the first time we’ve done this,” says Alhaidan.

Taking stock of the current state of play of the Saudi Arabia’s emerging film industry and the legacy of the SFF as it marks its 10th edition, Almulla says the situation is moving fast.

“In the early years we had just three or four local productions, and now there are 25, 30 a year, and next year, I think it will jump to 60,” he says. “But there’s still a lot of work to do in terms of building infrastructure and creating legal and professional frameworks for people working in film and TV.”

Quizzed on whether there are any particular emerging talents that he is pleased to have supported over the first 10 editions, Almulla will not be drawn on names.

“All of them,” he says. “Nearly every single Saudi filmmaker, male or female, has come through the SFF in some way, from the development of their projects to the screening of their films.”

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