Saudi Arabia resurfaces with Hollywood ambitions in Cannes

After making their debut on the Croisette in 2018, Saudi Arabia is back in Cannes.

The kingdom has a national pavilion promoting the launch of a large-scale film festival on the Red Sea and seeks to attract more international productions to come and shoot in AlUla, a vast area of ​​desert and giant boulders that is home to a ancient city.

Since Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year religious ban on cinema in 2017, the kingdom has experienced a boom in all aspects of the film industry’s business, recently becoming the Middle’s most profitable territory. Orient in terms of box office returns in theaters.

But Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to build a film industry were hampered by the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and reports that appear to implicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the assassination that instigated state media companies -United and elsewhere to fight.

Does this change? The Saudi presence at Cannes 2021, which is testing the ground, gives some indications that this is the case.

“I can tell you that I hesitated for a long time before taking up the challenge,” said former director of the Directors’ Fortnight Edouard Waintrop, recently appointed artistic director of the Red Sea Film Festival, which will hold its first edition in December.

“When I accepted, in all my discussions with the authorities, I made it clear that I did not want censorship on Arab films because I share the Saudi authorities’ hope to make Saudi Arabia a major player of the game of Arab cinema “, he added.

“I know there is politics behind the scenes,” Waintrop noted. And “by opening this door, we do not know what will happen”, he underlined.

“But if films are made, it will change many aspects of society there,” said the veteran French film critic, who points out that many films shot in the Arab world these days have a theme of empowering women “and we know that the most backward country in this regard is Saudi Arabia.

As the crisis over Khashoggi’s death prompted the United States to pull out, such as Hollywood agency Endeavor’s decision to return a $ 400 million investment to the Saudis, Hollywood now appears to be tiptoeing back. .

The first major filming at AlUla was Anthony and Joe Russo’s drama “Cherry”, starring Tom Holland as an Iraq War veteran turned opioid addict, an Apple Original film for which the Saudi Desert replaced Iraq.

“We organized the shooting of ‘Cherry’, which shot three days at AlUla and one day at Ryadh,” said Stephen Strachan, Royal Commission cinematography commissioner for AlUla. “It was the second unit, but it was with the Russo brothers,” he added.

Another Hollywood photo currently preparing to shoot there is the Gerard Butler action thriller “Kandahar”, directed by Ric Roman Waugh, which MBC, the Saudi Arabian television giant from the Middle East, co-produces and co-funds with The Capstone Group. and CAA. Media funding. Strachan said he expects to announce the shooting of other major international productions at AlUla in the coming months.

Hollywood negotiators on the ground in Cannes noted how aggressive AlUla was in its efforts to secure top-notch meetings, brushing aside any potential optical issues around working with the kingdom. Following this year’s Oscar campaign for Bryan Fogel’s documentary “The Dissident,” which detailed Khashoggi’s murder, public and private tensions over working with Saudi Arabia have been renewed.

The kingdom’s public fund took a large stake in the Walt Disney Company on the open market last April and invested around $ 50 million in the Russo brothers’ production company AGBO around the same time. SRMG, a publicly traded Saudi publishing and media company, remains a minority investor in PMC, Varietythe parent company of.

Meanwhile, the Red Sea Festival is significantly disrupting the Arab festival circuit with its recent decision to move the dates of its inaugural edition to Jeddah from December 6 to 15, three weeks later than the announced date of November 11 to 20. These dates now overlap with the next edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, the oldest and most prestigious event in the region, which runs from December 1-10. They are also leaving the Marrakech International Film Festival, which is usually held in early December – although they have yet to announce their dates – in the air.

Shortly before announcing its aggressive festival date change in June, the Red Sea Film Foundation, which oversees the festival, announced a $ 10 million fund – which in Cannes was increased to $ 14 million – for projects from directors in the Arab world and Africa with plans to support over 100 film and television projects in its first year.

Waintrop said Variety that the change of date of the Red Sea event was not decided by the festival management. It is believed to have been dictated by the government.

“This is exactly the kind of situation that we should try to avoid as Arab festivals,” said Mohamed Hefzy, director of the Cairo film festival, who is also a prominent Egyptian producer and has at least one Arab cinema project funded by Saudi Arabia in preparation. .

“But we are cooperating with the Red Sea,” added Hefzy. “Even though it’s not an ideal situation, we have to make the most of it and turn it into an opportunity. “