Jeddah: Half-a-decade after Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on cinema, the Middle East nation's first international film festival has opted for a compelling mix of Bollywood and Hollywood stars to kick off its fourth edition this week.
The Red Sea International Film Festival
The Red Sea International Film Festival opened on Thursday by honouring Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and his Hollywood counterparts Emily Blunt and Vin Diesel for making a lasting impact on the global film industry at a star-studded ceremony.
Khan was presented the Red Sea Honour award by Hollywood actor Eva Longoria, the 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Only Murders in the Building' star, who recalled the influence of his movies like 'Lagaan', the last Indian film to be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and '3 Idiots' on her own life and career.
The Red Sea festival, which moved back this year to Jeddah's Al-Balad heritage district, the venue of its first edition and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a long list of Bollywood actors in its In Conversation With programme, including Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor along with Hollywood actors Brendan Frazer, who won the Best Actor Oscar for 'The Whale' last year, 'Sex and the City' star Sarah Jessica Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, husband Michael Douglas and Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian ever to win the Best Actress Oscar, for 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' last year.
"Follow your heart," said Kareena Kapoor answering a question on her advice to aspiring actors and filmmakers in Saudi Arabia's nascent film industry at a packed In Conversation With event on Friday attended mostly by Jeddah's sizeable South Asian immigrant community members.
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'Superboys of Malegaon' by Reema Kagti, the story of a band of amateur filmmakers in Maharashtra, is part of the Red Sea festival's international competition, which boasts of a jury headed by American director Spike Lee. Bangladeshi film, 'Saba' by Maksud Hossain, is also among 16 feature films vying for the festival's top prize, the Golden Yusr, which carries a purse of 100,000 dollars (approximately 85 lakh rupees). (with Agency inputs)
'Santosh' by Meerut-born Indian-British filmmaker Sandhya Suri, on caste and religious divide in rural India, which premiered at the Cannes film festival, is part of the Festival Favourites section in Jeddah along with Chinese film 'Black Dog' and 'Little Jaffna', which explores the Sri Lankan Tamil community in Paris by Sri Lankan-origin French filmmaker Lawrence Valin.
'I"ll Smile in September, a feature film project in development set in Old Delhi and Dehradun, from Panipat, Haryana-born debutant director Akash Chhabra is among the new ventures aiming for co-production possibilities at the festival's Red Sea Lodge film market, which was opened to filmmakers and producers from the whole of Asia this year. It was earlier limited to projects from the Middle East and Africa. The story of Kismateen, a young brass band trumpeter in Old Delhi, the film project has earlier participated in film markets like the Film Bazaar in Goa and Busan film festival market in South Korea last year.
The Red Sea film market's Series Lab programme for new projects in television series, which is in its second edition this year, has two ventures from India-- 'Cold Case One (Pullukandam Murder Case), a Malayalam language series co-written by Malayalam filmmakers Nithin Lukose and Hari Krishnan, and the Hindi language 'Shani Bazaar' by Karan Kabir and Nitin Koul.
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Set in Kerala, 'Cold Case One' tells the story of two police officers struggling to solve a 30-year-old murder case of a man allegedly by his children for his wealth. 'Shani Bazaar', which happens in a village in North India, is about an upper-caste man forced to become a manual scavenger.
The Red Sea film festival, which opened with the Saudi Arabia-Egypt co-production, 'The Tale of Daye's Family', the story of a teenage Nubian albino winning entry into a popular singing competition, will run up to December 14. (with Agency inputs)
