Red Sea Festival Director of Int’l Programming on the Rise of Female Stories and Music Films

The fourth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) is unspooling in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Dec. 5-14, with a lineup of 2024 festival circuit highlights and world and international premieres.

In unveiling the slate of this year’s International Spectular strand of the festival, director of international programming Kaleem Aftab highlighted: “We’re especially proud that the section has films that will delight all audiences, whether they are fans of documentaries, musicals, drama or family entertainment. There is something for everyone.”

In a conversation with THR, Aftab talked about the presence of female voices and music-themed films at this year’s RSIFF, as well as the progress the Saudi festival has made in attracting international premieres of movies that other players on the fest circuit would also love to feature.

What do you see as some of the big “gets” in this year’s lineup?

What’s incredible this year is we’re getting international premieres of films like Napoli – New York by an Academy Award winner [Gabriele Salvatores who won the Academy Award for Mediterraneo] and 40 Acres. Napoli – New York is based on a story idea by Federico Fellini, and the fact that a production of this size wants to come to the Red Sea Film Festival and feels that it is a great place to launch has shown how much we’ve evolved over these last few years. I feel this is something that Venice would have tried to get.

Of course, it’s also always great to get big films like Maria, We Live in Time, or Kraven the Hunter from the studios.

40 Acres — we saw that at TIFF. It’s a huge Canadian production. And the fact that after TIFF it has decided to come to us as their place where they see that they can get great media, have a nice red carpet and have a launch pad, shows how far the Red Sea festival has come in four years.

What’s been driving that?

I think it is the fact that the film industry has become more global and is looking more for productions across the world. While the pandemic has definitely slowed down the box office around the world, the growth markets are all in Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This is where we can get people excited now.

Also as a new market, Saudi Arabia is a big country that is offering different possibilities. There’s also money going into production. There’s a lot that goes on across the Red Sea Foundation in regards to production, finding projects and putting them in the Souk [market]. And people — not to blow our own trumpet — feel like the Red Sea programming is really great.

Any themes you have noticed that are popping up across the RSIFF lineup this year?

There is definitely a big theme of music. There are a lot of music films. I think we have five in our galas section — from K-Pops! to Better Man and the documentary My Way. Music is very exciting because I think people are looking for uplifting stories. With everything that is going on in the world, people are now wanting to go to the cinema for escapism. They want to leave the cinema feeling good. That’s one of the goals of getting people not just into a festival, but also into cinemas, and letting them leave feeling so good about the experience that they want to tell their friends. That’s tricky to do with some of the more hard-hitting films, or films that have a social conscience, when the news is mostly depressing. So I think that escapism in cinema is great.

Another trend that carries on, thankfully the film industry is changing, is that there are more female filmmakers across the board. I feel that’s creating a lot more films that are about emotional intelligence and that are character-driven, rather than action-driven.

There seem to also be more female protagonists, right? Or is it mostly about female directors?

I think the stories themselves are key. Because if we look at our competition, even something like Saba [by Bangladesh’s Maksud Hossain about a young woman caring for her paraplegic mother], is from a male director but has a female protagonist as a strong character front and center. These are films centering on female characters who are using their intelligence, their brains, their intuition — all of these things. And the stories are becoming much more nuanced, much more about how every little choice we make affects bigger decisions, and what life these choices have driven us to. I love those types of films.

Anything else you would like to mention about the progress of the RSIFF or the 2024 lineup?

What I would love to highlight is that the evolution of films from the [Red Sea] Lodge [the RSIFF creative and professional training program for filmmakers and producers] to the Fund to the competition at the festival is only getting stronger. We’re now finally seeing films that were in the Lodge in year one and then became funded becoming available to the Red Sea Film Festival. That is only making the Foundation and the festival stronger. It’s really showing in our film selection. But we don’t just pick Red Sea Fund films. We have 11 funded films in the selection which creates a core that we can build off of. But I like the standard of films that we’re able to attract across the board.

Our Festival Favorites selection is particularly incredible this year from the international side. And there is the fact that the competition has five female directors from Asia and Africa, which is the most we’ve ever had. That highlights how naturally things are changing.

Also, there are opportunities. We’re a festival of discovery, and we’re offering those moments, especially for films such as Napoli – New York or 40 Acres that maybe get lost in the bigger festivals. We can really be a launch pad for them.