Saudi Film Festival 2025 focuses on the cinema of identityhttps://en.majalla.com/node/325206/culture-social-affairs/saudi-film-festival-2025-focuses-cinema-identity
Saudi Film Festival 2025 focuses on the cinema of identity
Featuring a production market, workshops, discussions, and international collaborations, this year’s festival shows that the event has evolved into a space that shapes films before they are made.
saudi film festival
The Saudi Film Festival
Saudi Film Festival 2025 focuses on the cinema of identity
Since its launch in 2008, the Saudi Film Festival has helped shape an Arab cinematic landscape driven by aspiration. What began as a modest yet far-sighted event enjoys its 11th edition this week, taking place from 17-23 April.
From its inception, the Saudi Film Festival (SFF) has served as a platform not just for local films but for an evolving discourse around Saudi cinema, including its aims and identity. The festival has a dual role as both a retrospective of achievements and a search for the films and conversations of the future.
Organised by the Saudi Cinema Association in partnership with the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture (Ithra) and supported by the Film Commission, this year’s festival theme is ‘Stories Seen and Told’, and its programme has greatly expanded, with 68 films from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, and beyond.
This year’s SFF includes collaborations with international festivals from France and Japan, an active production market, script development labs, a tribute to a distinguished artist, and a special segment dedicated to Japanese cinema featuring selected short films by directors such as Yohei Osabe, Tomomi Muraguchi, and Kōji Yamamura, along with two feature-length works by Ken Ochiai and Masakazu Kaneko.
Saudi cinematic activity is benefitting from increased production support, but some observers question whether this has resulted in more quantity than quality.
This year's festival, titled Stories Seen and Told, features 68 films from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, and beyond
Broad spectrum
After a seven-year hiatus, the SFF was revived in 2015 as a key platform for debut films and a space for emerging Saudi writers, directors, actors, and producers to shape the future of Saudi cinema. This year's SFF features eight feature films that reflect a broad spectrum of Saudi and Arab cinematic voices.
The films will be assessed by a jury chaired by Ismaël Ferroukhi, a Moroccan director and screenwriter who received awards from the Cannes Film Festival and who is widely recognised for his exploration of identity and migration.
Other jurists include Saudi filmmaker Walaa Bahefzallah, who was noted for her focus on social narratives and women's issues, and Laura Marks, a Canadian scholar and contributor to the fields of philosophy and visual media.
They will be judging the comedy film Esaaf, directed by Colin Teague; the psychological thriller Holes, directed by Abdul Mohsen Al-Dhabaan; Salma and Qamar, a film by Saudi director Ahd Kamel; Hobal, directed by Saudi filmmaker Abdulaziz Alshalahei; Songs of Adam by Iraqi director Oday Rasheed; Session Adjourned, directed by Kuwaiti filmmaker Mohammed Al-Mujaibel; and Fakhr Al-Suwaidi, co-directed by Hesham Fathy from Egypt and Abdullah Bamjbour and Osama Saleh from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi film Siwar, directed by Osama Al-Khurayji, will also be presented.
Documentaries and short films
This year's festival will also present seven documentaries, spanning themes from personal reflection to social observation and visual inquiry. They will be judged by Egyptian director and producer Marianne Khoury, Saudi filmmaker and producer, and French director and cinematographer Sylvie Ballyot.
The short film competition features 21 contenders encompassing a range of styles and languages. They will be judged by Japanese director Jean Oushiai, Jordanian writer and director Layali Badr, and Saudi director and content creator Musab Al-Omari.
The selected films come from Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, France, and the UK. They offer intimate and often unsettling meditations on the self and the other, on language and memory, on detachment and belonging. While not all newly produced, they have been chosen because they resonate with the festival's central theme.
Notable examples include Habibti by Antoine Stehlé; In the Waiting Room by Moatasem Taha; CHIKHA by Ayoub Layoussifi and Zahoua Raji; If the Sun Drowned in an Ocean of Clouds by Wissam Charaf; and Keep by Lewis Rose.
They help show how cinema engages with human vulnerability as a reflection of identity. Elements such as family, place, absence, and the body are also explored. Identity is therefore not presented as a definitive label, but as a dynamic, tension-filled space between the urge to define oneself and the fear of constraint.
Ibrahim Al-Hasawi during the photoshoot for the film "Hagan" at the 2023 Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah.
Ibrahim Al-Hsawi
This year's tribute to actor Ibrahim Al-Hsawi is highly symbolic, not only because he is one of the Kingdom's most distinguished dramatic figures but also because his personal journey reflects the broader transformations in Saudi performing arts.
Al-Hsawi has been there throughout the country's artistic evolution, from village theatre and conventional television institutions to early participation in short film initiatives like Aayesh by Abdullah Al-Eyaf and Peddlers by Hind Al-Fahhad.
In recent years, both Saudi and Arab directors have asked him to play big roles in productions such as The Sleeping Tree (by Bahraini filmmaker Mohammed Rashed Buali), Before We Forget (by Emirati director Nawaf Al-Janahi), Hajjan (by Egyptian director Abou Bakr Shawky), and Hobal (by Saudi director Abdulaziz Alshalahei).
His recognition, which celebrates both a career and a generation, will include the launch of a commemorative book titled From Village Theatre to the Global Screen, which documents Al-Hsawi's career and features a selection of tributes. In addition, book signings will be held for works by Abdulmohsen Al-Mutairi, Amin Saleh, Mohammed Al-Bashir, Hassan Al-Hajili, and Bilal Al-Badr.
With a production market, workshops, discussions, and international collaborations, this year's edition of the SFF shows that it has evolved into a space that shapes426 films from their genesis. No longer just a platform for showcasing completed works, it has become a familial, generative space for creating future narratives. The defining question now is not 'what will we watch' but 'what will we dare to tell'.
