Saudi fans revel on ‘green carpet’ – ‘Stained Hearts’, ‘Hope’ open 3rd Saudi Film Festival

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DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia, March 25, (Agencies): The “red carpet” was made of green artificial turf and women wore traditional black robes instead of plunging necklines when the third Saudi Film Festival opened on Thursday night.

About 400 enthusiastic film fans filled a hall for the opening ceremony at a culture and arts centre in the Gulf coast city of Dammam.

Although public cinemas are banned in the conservative kingdom, which practises an austere version of Islam, there is a growing interest in cinema and filmmaking.

Saudis are voracious viewers of online videos and rank among the world’s top viewers of YouTube.

Private film screenings are also held in the kingdom, although the festival’s English programme says it takes place “under the supervision” of its organiser, the Saudi Arabian Society for Culture and Arts, and the information ministry.

Yellow and purple lights swirled on the ceiling before the hall darkened.

A six-metre (yard) screen showed trailers from among the 70 Saudi productions competing at the five-day festival, while six speakers mounted high on the walls blared cinema-strength sound.

Women sat at the back, in keeping with the kingdom’s official policy of separation of the sexes, but almost none covered their faces, as many in the capital Riyadh normally would. Some even went without the traditional hair covering.

Men were in front on red chairs — not plush theatre seats but the kind commonly used in banquet halls.

They hooted and loudly applauded the opening remarks of festival director Ahmed AlMulla before watching a tribute to the late Saad al-Fruraih, a pioneering Saudi television director.

Opening night gave a world premiere to three of the festival entries. Rakan AlHarbi’s fantasy “Their Stained Hearts” tells the story of a museum for “terrorists” and the conversation a visitor has with a wounded bomber lying bloodied among his victims.

“Hope”, is a thought-provoking drama by Hajar Alnaim about mercy killing, and Mohammed Salman’s delightful documentary “Yellow” features taxi drivers in Qatif city.

Paparazzi

Earlier, film fans crowded onto the “green carpet” in a courtyard, posing for photographs not by paparazzi but by the festival’s photo team with “media” emblazoned on their shirts.

AlMulla told AFP the red carpet that he planned did not arrive in time, but the green one did just fine.

It became a crowded platform for some young men who dispensed with their traditional white Saudi thobes and checkered shemagh headdress. Instead, they wore pork pie or Andy Capp hats, bow ties, permed hair and twisted moustaches.

Organisers hope the event will help develop the country’s nascent film industry.

“We try to raise the standards, to make it better,” AlMulla told AFP.

This is the second consecutive annual festival after the event resumed last year following an absence of seven years.

The festival will culminate on Monday night when winners receive Golden Palm Tree trophies in the drama, documentary and student categories. Scripts not yet in production are also judged.

Mai Alshaibani, 21, is hoping for a win with her first-ever screenplay “S.A.D.”, the story of Ahmed and his girlfriend Sara whom he leaves to marry Dina.

“We have a lot of support from the youth,” AlMulla said. “Nobody can stop them.”

A filmmaker in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah about a month ago organised the first Youth Film Fest.

“I think this momentum is going to continue to build,” said Bentley Brown, an American who teaches at Jeddah’s Effat University for women, which offers the kingdom’s only filmmaking programme.

French director Alice Winocour and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts said they drew on their own personal experiences for “Disorder”, a paranoia thriller about a former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The film, released as “Maryland” in France last year, follows ex-special forces soldier Vincent, played by “Far from the Madding Crowd” actor Schoenaerts, whose job is to protect the family of a wealthy Lebanese businessman.

When his employer is called away, leaving Vincent to tend to the safety of his wife, played by Diane Kruger, and child, the ex-soldier fights his own paranoia while feeling that they are in danger.

Winocour said her own personal traumatic experience had been an inspiration for the film. “I had suffered from PTSD myself by giving birth to my daughter and almost died from pre-eclampsia with her,” she said.

“And that is what the film is about … sensation, and the film is almost like a sensory experience and I wanted it to be very physical.”

Schoenaerts said he was so anxious making the film that he could not sleep. “I was in a situation where I only had like three weeks’ prep and that gave me a lot of anxiety, I was so nervous and I was scared that I wasn’t going to make it.

“By accident, by being so nervous I slept … two hours a night … and I started to notice that I was having similar symptoms to what these guys were going through, so I pushed that button, and then of course I tried to study myself as I was going through it,” he said.

Schoenaerts, who also recently starred in the moody erotic thriller “A Bigger Splash”, added that the cast and crew started acting “funky” after two months of filming in the luxurious house around which the drama is centred.

“That house in the beginning feels like a palace … But if you spend two months, it becomes more of a prison, and people don’t like to be in jail, so everybody started acting funky.”

“Disorder” is released in UK cinemas on Friday.

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