Arab Cinema Steps into Genre to Tell Authentic and Diverse Stories as Audience Appetite for Horror and Fantasy Grows

variety.com:

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor The third edition of the Red Sea Film Festival, wrapping Saturday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, felt like a direct response to a burning question from executives and investors present at the festival’s market arm last year: Could Saudi Arabia step out from drama and comedy and head into genre filmmaking?

The answer offered by the festival, it turns out, was a resounding yes. “Arabs are closer to fantasy than the Western world,” director Yasir Al-Yasiri told Variety of this year’s Red Sea Film Festival opening film, “HWJN.” The film, a sprawling fantasy about the Arab Jinn culture set and shot in Jeddah, comes at the “right time,” according to the director. “We have the means to do so, and so many talented people have gathered great experience from working abroad with big companies and now they are working in our region.” “Saudi changed so much that suddenly we had room to explore,” said Lina Mahmoud, one of this year’s participants of the Red Sea Lodge, the Red Sea Film Foundation’s 10-month residency program.

Mahmoud is a filmmaker born and bred in Jeddah and currently working on her feature debut “The Night Whisperer.” The project is described as an “elevated thriller,” about a lost traveler with no memories, who arrives at an isolated desert village where people are cursed with mysterious insomnia. “I am fully aware this type of idea is not everybody’s cup of tea, so I think I am lucky that Saudi has changed and things are opening up just as I begin my filmmaking journey.

Now, people are pushing for these films to be made,” concluded Mahmoud, who said she spent her childhood watching fantasy films like the “Star Wars” franchise with friends and family.