Silver Screen Success: Saudi Film Makes Historic Cannes Debut
The red carpet has been rolled out as Cannes Film Festival screened a Saudi film as an Official Selection for the first time…
The Festival de Cannes, one of the film industry’s most important annual events, held even greater weight this year for the Arab world. This year, for the first time in the festival’s 77-year history, a Saudi film was part of the Official Selection. Written, directed and produced by Tawfik al-Zaidi, Norah is a drama set in the Kingdom in the 1990s, centred around artistic expression in a time of censorship. The film, which is supported by the Saudi Film Commission through its Daou initiative, was entered along with 17 other titles, into the festival’s prestigious Un Certain Regard section, which spotlights emerging talent and non-traditional narratives.
The first project to be filmed entirely in AlUla, a historic city in the Medina province of north-western Saudi Arabia, Norah follows the story of Nader, a failed artist turned schoolteacher played by rising star Yaqoub Alfarhan, who moves to a remote village and helps a young girl called Norah, played by newcomer Maria Bahrawi, to uncover and realise her creative potential at a time when artistic expression was banned. The couple’s meeting fuels a passion for art in them both and, as a friendship blossoms, they inspire one another to fuel the flames of creativity in the face of censorship.
While the film premiered at the Kingdom’s Red Sea Film Festival last December, its international debut at Cannes Film Festival 2024 is a huge achievement for Saudi cinema – which lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinema just seven years ago – because it generates global interest in a Middle East project and puts Saudi on the filmmaking map.
Another exciting introduction to Saudi cinema at Cannes this year was the AlUla Creates: Film Programme Showcase. A platform nurturing emerging talent in the Kingdom, the showcase will see AlUla Creates winners – Hana Alfasi, Maram Taibah and sisters Raneem and Dana Almohandes – present their short films, Malika, Bygones and Mosquito on May 20.
Saudi’s debut Official Selection and AlUla Creates film showcases are all symbols of the rapidly developing film industry in the Kingdom and affirm a growing international interest in its relatively embryonic yet burgeoning business. History in the making.
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