Festival In Focus: Saudi Film Festival Director Ahmed Almulla Talks Underground Beginnings & Cinema Dreams As Event Marks 10th Anniversary
deadline.comJust over six years have passed since Saudi Arabia announced the lifting of its 35-year cinema ban as part of a strategy to open up the country and move its economy away from a reliance on oil.
In a sign that things were already bubbling prior to the Ministry of Culture’s official announcement in December 2017, the country’s Saudi Film Festival (SFF), taking place in the Eastern Province city of Dhahran, will mark its 10th anniversary from May 2 to 9.
The event grew out of under-the-radar screenings in the early 2000s at a local culture association of arthouse DVDs, subtitled into Arabic by an underground outfit. “We were fighting to screen films in public,” recounts SFF’s founding director Ahmed Almulla, the artist and poet who spearheaded the screenings. “Things changed in the blink of eye.
It’s a revolution, what’s happened in Saudi Arabia with art and culture.” “Our filmmakers were dreamers. They made their films underground and then went outside the country to screen them but couldn’t talk about the experience when they returned.
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