Red Sea Film Festival Heads Jomana Al Rashid & Shivani Pandya Talk Upcoming 4th Edition: “This Is Much More Than Just A Festival”

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival unveiled the selection for its 4th edition on Monday as well as its new headquarters in the historic center of its home city of Jeddah.

The festival, running from December 5 to 14, will open with Egyptian director Karim Shenawy’s feel-goo drama The Tale Of Daye’s Family (aka Light), then showcase some 120 features and shorts from 81 territories. Read about the line-up in detail here.

The festival’s Managing Director Shivani Pandya, and Jomana Al Rashid, Chairwoman of the event’s parent body, the Red Sea Film Foundation, talked to Deadline about the upcoming edition as it final elements come together.

DEADLINE: Last year, the festival came together against the backdrop of the Hollywood Actors’ strike and early days of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which made it harder to secure films and talent. How has it been this year?

PANDYA: We haven’t had any hesitation at this point. We’ll have a really nice mix. We’ve had very few conversations about people being worried about coming into the region. In fact, we’re seeing some huge names coming through.

DEADLINE: It’s a busy period on the Middle East and North Africa film festival circuit. There’s El Gouna and Cairo in Egypt, and then Marrakech in Morocco, followed by the Red Sea. Does this make it harder for you to secure films and projects?

PANDYA: Not at all. With our film program, we are at 50% world or international premieres this year. We’ve done really well, and all the films that we wanted for the competition, we’ve got. There’s enough to go around.

DEADLINE: After two years at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, the festival is moving back to Jeddah’s historic Al Balad district. Will everything take place there now?

SHIVANI PANDYA: Everybody loved being in Al Balad for our first edition. We’re really excited about being back and in our new headquarters. It’s beautiful and people are going to love it. There are five theaters, one auditorium and all the screenings and a lot of the in-conversations will be there.  Within Al Balad itself, we’ve taken over a lot of the different historic houses and done a beautiful pop-up souk. Everything’s pretty much in walking distance or a buggy ride away.

DEADLINE: With the festival now at its fourth edition, it is no longer the new kid on the block, how do you keep the momentum and buzz around the event going?

AL RASHID: What we’ve been trying to say, especially over the past two years, is that this is much more than just a festival. It’s a foundation with several pillars. We’re expanding our other verticals, which are the labs, the souk, the lodge, and, of course, the fund. And when it comes to the fund, we’ve also expanded the territories, so that we’re now giving grants into Asia. This is in line with our original strategy, which is to become the home of cinema for the Arab world, Africa and Asia.

DEADLINE: Egyptian director Karim Shenawy’s drama The Tale Of Daye’s Family is opening the festival. What was the thinking behind this choice?

PANDYA: it’s a beautiful, light-hearted film. It’s co-production between Saudi and Egypt, with Aseel Omran, who’s a Saudi actress, acting in an Egyptian film. Apart from that, when you see the storyline, it’s nice. You want something slightly up-lifting. It’s the balance that you need to have for an opening night film. Karim is a director to be watched in the Arab world. Everybody likes his films [Gunshot] and his TV series [Seventh Year Itch, Take Care Of Zizi]. The writer [Haitham Dabbour] is also quite prolific. It also features the Sudanese actress who was in You Will Die At 20. It’s a nice mix. It represents independent cinema in this part of the world and shows the collaboration that is happening.

DEADLINE: There seems to be a lot of interaction between the emerging Saudi Arabian film industry and Egypt’s more established film business right now…

PANDYA: Absolutely, films from Egypt do really well in Saudi and the box office numbers are great. And here, Saudi films are also doing well. There’s a close proximity between the cultures. So, it’s natural to collaborate, and I think for us, it’s incredible that these collaborations are getting made and we’re seeing new content coming through and strong voices.

DEADLINE: That opening slot is always a tricky one to get right. Did you consider trying to get a big U.S. movie or was it a deliberate move to take a film from the region?

AL RASHID: This was definitely an internal debate. We did consider a Hollywood film, and an international film. However, I don’t think that then differentiates us from any other festival. We do have a unique selling point, and we are trying to leave our mark between all of the various festivals, and that’s why we decided, “Let’s start with a film from Africa, Asia or the Arab world”.  That’s how we kind of then nailed it down to The Tale Of Daye’s Family.

In the future, if we had a really good international or Hollywood premiere, then we would do that. I don’t want to limit it to Arab or African or Asian films, so I’m not ruling that out, but it was definitely a debate.

DEADLINE: Johnny Depp new film Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness, which was supported by Red Sea Film Foundation, is in the selection. Depp was at the festival last year with Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry, will he back in person again?

PANDYA: Yes, he is very passionate about the film. We sent some interns to the set as part of our apprentice program. Through our labs, we shortlisted crew that they could look at hiring and they then took four people from Saudi who were in Hungary on set for a month. It’s been a project that we’ve been involved with and it’s been a great give back to the young filmmakers and the industry here. They had an incredible time. They learned a lot. For us, having the film come and be shown here is great.

DEADLINE: In the last two editions, you’ve run a star-studded In Conversations program with the likes of Will Smith, Sharon Stone, Spike Lee and Ranveer Singh sharing lessons learned from their careers. You’ve yet to release the speakers this year, will the line-up be as Hollywood and Bollywood focused as in the past?

AL RASHID: The In Conversations have become a cornerstone of the festival. It’s all about knowledge sharing, and filmmakers from different parts of the world learning from established stars. It’s definitely something that we want to continue doing and we’re expanding.

We’re going to be including more regional talent. We’ve reached the realization that there are some nuances and differences between the struggles, challenges and opportunities between our different markets. So, we don’t want to simply limit it to the experiences of the international established stars, we also want to bring in people from the region to pass on their knowledge.

DEADLINE: What’s been interesting about the In Conversations in the past is that the speakers – however famous – are very focused on the audience of emerging filmmakers. Will Smith’s talk last year was fascinating for the way it revealed the challenges he faced earlier on in his career and to this day.

Al Rashid: One of my proudest moments at the festival was during the Spike Lee In-Conversation [in 2022]. That for was a turning point for the festival. When we opened up the questions from the floor, we got one from a filmmaker from Nigeria, another one from a filmmaker from Algeria…  I just looked around me and thought, ‘What is going on over here?’ This was two years into the festival, and we had filmmakers from different walks of life and different markets coming together. That’s something that really differentiates the festival from all the other festivals in the region.

DEADLINE: On the basis of what you said with regards to the In Conversation line-up are you shifting away from Hollywood and more towards a local and regional more generally?

Al Rashid: Not at all. Ultimately for us, its about bridging the gap and bringing people closer together to create real opportunities for both markets. It’s not limited to kind of opening up the region. We’re an inclusive festival. We want filmmakers and films and ideas from completely different markets, so we don’t want to limit ourselves to the region at all.

We do not even label ourselves as an Arab or Saudi festival, we’re an international film festival. However, we have definitely decided that there is a specific strategy that we want to pursue, given that we’ll never be able to compete with the likes of Cannes and Venice when it comes to Hollywood productions, but if we have the right offering around Asia, Africa and the Arab world, then the rest will follow.

There is also a massive appetite when it comes to U.S. productions, or Hollywood productions, connecting with Saudi Arabia, be it as a co-production, for financing opportunities, or filming in Saudi Arabia with all of the various new projects that are being unveiled. We’re definitely not going to be changing that strategy.

DEADLINE: It’s still just seven years since Saudi Arabia’s cinema ban was lifted and the country started to kick-start a local film industry. What sense do you have of where the Saudi film industry is at now?

AL RASHID: We’re going to be proudly presenting an exceptional lineup from Saudi Arabia’s filmmaking community. The program this year includes six feature Saudi feature films, one in competition, two new Saudi cinema features, and three in the Arab Spectacular line-up and then we have another seven Saudi shorts. We’re very proud of these numbers and we will continue supporting the Saudi film industry. Over the past year, we’ve had Mandob and Norah find success in international film festivals, both of which played in the Red Sea.

DEADLINE: A lot of the early push in terms of the festival and more generally in the wider Saudi cinema scene, was around the drive to get female voices heard. What is the situation now? Are women punching through? It feels like they’re struggling to progress to features?

PANDYA: We’re seeing more and more. In our labs program, more than 50% of the participants are women. We need to give it more time.  There’s a huge amount of interest. They’re super smart. They’re raging to go. A lot of the girls that work in our office, and a lot of the trainees, are coming in from the film schools. We have Effat University in Jeddah. I think in the next couple of years, you’ll see the results. It’s a matter of time. This year we have Amd Kamal’s My Driver & I in the line-up, while Fatima Benawi’s Print played on Netflix earlier on in the year.

AL RASHID: I agree, it’s a matter of time. You see it, you feel it, you hear them… they’re everywhere. Ten years ago, the only name we could think of was Haifaa Al Mansour, now we have Hana Al Omair, Amd Kamal, Fatima Al-Benawi… there are so many names that are coming through. Give it another two, three years, and I’m hoping that we will open with a film directed by one of our very own Saudi female directors.

DEADLINE: One final question, Mohammed Al-Turki stepped down as CEO of the Red Sea Film Foundation in June, having been at the forefront of its work. Will he be replaced?

AL RASHID: We currently have an acting CEO [Mohammed Asseri] and Shivani continues as the managing director of the festival. However, as we said in the press release at the time of Mohammed’s departure, there is an active search ongoing for a new CEO. We’re very proud of the foundation that we’ve built and the current team that is in place. That ultimately hasn’t stopped the strategy from being implemented or even deterred it. It’s simply a matter of growth and evolution. Last year we had approximately 1,800 submissions. This year, we had over 2,000. It continues to grow, to develop. to evolve, and we continue to also expand on our other verticals. Myself and Shivani are not just restructuring the verticals, but also further investing in the verticals to ensure that we have year-round events activated in a manner that is as big as the festival, I think everyone tends to focus on the culmination of the year-round events, which is the festival, but don’t realize what goes on behind the scenes and throughout the other eleven months.