Focus countries

In the 1970s, some Sudanese trained as filmmakers in Western Europe and the Soviet Union and then tried to launch something like a Nouvelle Vague in their homeland. This did not quite succeed, but various notable films were made. In his documentary Talking about Trees, which will be screened at the festival, Suhaib Gasmelbari portrays some of those pioneers of Sudanese filmmaking and intersperses excerpts from their works. After the end of Omar al-Bashir's 30-year dictatorship in 2019, hope blossomed in Sudan. Young people in particular believed in a cultural renaissance of their country and women found their voice. But the military government did not relinquish power, and since April 15, 2023, a bitter war has been raging in Sudan between the army and the RSF militia. In the years between the dictatorship and the civil war, powerful films such as You Will Die at Twenty (2019) by Amjad Abu Alala and Goodbye Julia (2023) by Mohamed Kordofani were made and won accolades at festivals around the world.

In the 1980s, cinema was banned in Saudi Arabia for religious reasons. Since 2016, however, cultural liberalisation has taken place in the kingdom in the course of the Saudi Vision 2030 launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In addition to discos and other entertainment venues based on Western models, cinemas also reopened in 2018, and the picturesque desert country no longer served as a backdrop only for foreign productions. In addition to the Saudi Film Festival, which mainly presents domestic productions in the spectacular Ithra Centre, the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, founded in 2019, is now a flagship event for Arab cinema. As early as 2012, the Saudi director Haifaa Al-Mansour created the first film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia with her emancipation story Wadjda, landing a small worldwide success. Since then, Saudi filmmaking has grown enormously, producing idiosyncratic films such as Mandoob (2023) in addition to charming family dramas such as Ahd Kamel's My Driver & I (2024) and adventure films such as Hajjan (2024).