When I landed in Jeddah a couple of weeks ago on my first visit ever to Saudi Arabia to attend the Red Sea International Film Festival, I did not expect to be greeted by a woman at the gate. She sensed the surprise on my face when I introduced myself, as she greeted me in fluent English and with cheerful enthusiasm, before leading me through a shining modern airport to the immigration desk, which was also manned by women.

Another energetic young woman was waiting on the other side. She led me out of the airport to a festival-designated car, where I met the first man: the driver, who hailed from Pakistan. He tells me that nearly a third of the Saudi population, which amounts to 10 million people, are foreigners, who come there to work.

Arriving at the hotel, I was welcomed again by a young woman, who led me to the reception desk which was also manned by women. “What happened to Saudi men?” I asked the receptionist facetiously. “This is a new Saudi Arabia,” she responded, smiling confidently.

 

 

Although I was aware of the progress made in women’s rights in the conservative kingdom, I didn’t know to what extent and certainly didn’t expect it to have gone this far. And I was not alone in this thinking. An Arab-American filmmaker, who was also invited by the festival, called me before making her trip, asking if it was safe for her as a woman to attend. She was also surprised when I related to her my experience.

My hotel was located in modern Jeddah, which bears a great resemblance to many metropolitan American cities: skyscrapers, multi-lane streets, western chains, and heavy traffic. The festival, however, was held at the World-Heritage UNESCO historical city: A winding tangle of souks, mosques, and multi-story coral-stone tower houses with enclosed balconies of lattice teak wood.

Arriving there on my first evening, I find it bubbling with life, Bands playing music, chefs offering Saudi delicacies, artists flaunting their art to waves of sauntering crowds of men, women, and families.

 

 

While I was absorbing what I was witnessing in a country that until recently art, music, and film were forbidden, the Saudi filmmaker, Shahd Amin, whose award-winning film, Scales, represented her country at the Oscars in 2019, came rushing towards me, alongside her Iraqi producer and stamped two kisses on my cheeks. No one in the surrounding crowd raised an eyebrow.

Just two years ago, Amin told me that women were metaphorically buried alive in Saudi Arabia. “It’s completely different now,” she chimed excitedly as we sat down to grab a sandwich at the festival’s cafe – an act that could’ve got us both arrested a few years ago. She adds that the modern infrastructure I was seeing around me is also recent. “Who did all this,” I asked. “MBS,” she said.

MBS is the nickname of the young crown prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, the author of the 2030 vision, which entails among other things a cultural revolution that is changing many aspects of Saudi life and society. His revolution has made him very popular among the Saudi progressive youth. One young producer told me that he would take a bullet for the man. Even those who disapprove of his war in Yemen and his suppression of any criticism are willing to give him a chance.

“He rules with an iron fist,” a Saudi filmmaker tells me. “But maybe that’s the only way to enact such extreme reforms in an extremely conservative society. It’s a small price to pay for what we have achieved. He’s the best leader we’ve had since the establishment of the kingdom because unlike the others, who used to be in the Autumn years of their lives, he’s young and is eager to modernize the country, like the rest of us.”

But many in the West are not willing to forgive MBS for the murder of the Saudi journalist and activist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Kingdom’s embassy in Turkey in 2018, by his government’s agents, and refuse to work with him. Amongst them is Hollywood, which has boycotted the festival, except for a couple of stars, Hilary Swank and Anthony McKay, who attended the opening ceremony.

Saudi officials lamented the boycott, but the young professionals were less diplomatic in their response. “We have achieved more progress, more freedoms, and more security than all the Arab countries that the West tried to impose democracy on them,” they tell me. And when I pressed them on their definition of freedom, they said: “You can say and do whatever you want, as long as you don’t criticize MBS directly.”

 

Indeed, the foreign attendees of the film festival, sat in theatres stunned as they watched movies, depicting nudity and sex scenes, which are normally censored or banned in most Arab and Muslim countries. One of them is Layla Bouzid’s erotic film, A Tale of Love and Desire, which tells a love story between two Arab students in France and ends with a steamy sex scene.

“They screened the entirety of Ennio documentary without cutting even the sexual scenes from Pasolini’s films,” tells me an astonished Italian producer, Francesco Ranieri Martinotti, the director of Venice Days. “The world is underestimating the cultural progress that is happening here.”

Politically provocative movies that were rejected by other Arab film festivals were also given a red carpet treatment and received warmly by the Saudi audience. One of them, You Resemble Me by Egyptian-American Dina Amer, was even honored with the Festival’s Audience Award. The film explores the radicalization of French-Algerian Hasna Ait Boulahcen, who was falsely reported as the first female suicide bomber during the 2015 Saint-Denis police raid.

The makers of the Arabic-speaking film, Sharaf, were also surprised by the selection of their movie, which is set in a fictitious Arab country and tells the story of a man forced to admit committing a crime under torture and thrown in Jail, where he meets other political prisoners, who are campaigning to expose the corruption of Arab rulers and demanding cultural and political freedoms.

But like other international film festivals, the Red Sea focused on the empowerment of women and their representation in cinema. The majority of its 135 selected films were either made by women or centered around female characters. Three women, Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour, Egyptian actress Layla Olwi, and French actress Catherine Deneuve were honored with lifetime achievement awards.

“What is happening here reflects what’s going in the rest of the world,” says Palestinian Golden Globe winner director Hany Abu-Assad , whose latest film, Huda’s Salon, also revolves around Palestinian women trapped between an exploitative Israeli occupation and their strict patriarchal society. “Government and institutions all over the world are pushing towards minorities stories, including women.”

Ironically, Saudi Arabia leads in supporting female filmmakers. Nearly 50% of the participating Saudi films were made by women. One of them is director and actress Fatema Al Banawi, who co-emceed the opening ceremony.

“We don’t get any special privileges,” Al Banawi insists. “We compete with men as equals and we are judged on our merit only.”

Banawi, alongside four other Saudi filmmakers, presented their directorial debut, Becoming, which tells the stories of five women trying to overcome physical, societal, and personal challenges on their own. “We can’t wait for others to provide change for us. We have to rely on ourselves to achieve our goals and fulfill our dreams even if we fail, we have to keep trying,” Al Banawi says.

Given the lack of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia when Al Banawi entered the business nearly 10 years ago, she had to teach herself how to act and how to direct, until the opening of the first Cinema school at the Effat University in 2013, the only such school in the Kingdom and it’s for women only. Al Banawi and many other Saudi female filmmakers graduated there.

“Initially, we had to be discreet and low-key until the cultural revolution began in 2017,” says an Egyptian male professor at the school, which is equipped with modern and advanced filmmaking tools. Professors from the prestigious NYU and USC cinema schools are often invited to give lectures and train students here.

The Saudi public was equally enthusiastic about the festival. Unprecedented heavy traffic clogged the city streets as moviegoers descended on the old town, and stood quietly in long lines to secure seats at the screenings. For them, it was more than just watching a movie; it was a celebration of a new era.

“For 40 years, we had to travel to neighboring countries in order to watch our own movie, let alone Hollywood or Arabic movies,” says Al Banawai. “So imagine our excitement when we are able to do that in our own cities. It’s a blessing.”

In spite of Hollywood’s boycott and the spread of the new virus variant, Omicron, the Red Sea International Film Festival was a glorious success. While Saudi filmmakers were filled with pride for what they have achieved and with hope for what to come in the future, international and Arab filmmakers were delighted by the opening of the largest Arab market to their movies.