The Red Sea Film Fest Roundtable: “Stories Are the Way to Hopefully Bring People Together”

The third Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia put a spotlight on movies from the Middle East and North Africa region.

It also presented an opportunity to bring together six filmmakers with strong cinematic voices for the first-ever Hollywood Reporter roundtable at the fest, in partnership with Neom.

Among those participating in the roundtable were two past Oscar nominees and four hopefuls for the 2024 best international feature Oscar.

Representing Saudi Arabia was Ali Alkalthami, whose Mandoob, a satirical drama exploring the class divide, screened in the Red Sea festival’s competition. Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania, an Oscar nominee in 2021 for The Man Who Sold His Skin, brought Four Daughters, an experimental documentary-drama hybrid in which professional actors re-enact a family’s devastating experience of loss and that won the doc award in Cannes, to the fest’s Arab Spectacular lineup. It is also Tunisia’s submission for the best international feature Oscar.

The film shared the Cannes doc honor with Asmae El Moudir’s Moroccan documentary The Mother of All Lies, which puts the spotlight on family secrets and the nation’s history using a scale model of the director’s childhood neighborhood and figurines representing various people. The film was not just part of Red Sea’s Festival Favorites section but had also just won the top award in Marrakesh and is the country’s pick for the 2024 international feature Oscar.

Jordan’s Oscar hopeful, director Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah a Boy, about a widow fighting patriarchal laws, was part of the Jeddah festival’s competition program after earlier in the year becoming the first-ever Jordanian film selected for Cannes. Tiger Stripes, also in the competition lineup, comes from Malaysia’s Amanda Nell Eu. In addition to being Malaysia’s official international Oscar submission, the film won the best feature award in the Cannes Critics’ Week section

Rounding out the roundtable was Australia’s Baz Luhrmann, an Oscar nominee this year for Elvis and in 2002 for Moulin Rouge, who filled the role of president of the Red Sea festival jury.

The filmmakers discussed a range of topics with THR global business editor Georg Szalai, including what inspired them to become filmmakers, their cinematic voices and themes and their desire to tell their stories and share with the world a different perspective on the Middle East and its people.

Can you share with us how you first knew that you wanted to make movies and why you felt that calling so strongly?

Kaouther Ben Hania: I think it’s a long journey for all of us, especially for me because when I was young I thought that I wanted to write novels. I love literature, and I was raised with books, reading all the time. So for me, in my surrounding family, there was no one who worked in cinema. It’s like something for other people, not for us. So for me it was writing and storytelling. And little by little I discovered that I don’t have a good style in writing. It’s too complicated for me. But I love writing and the imagination. So when I discovered amateur cinema in it was like a revelation for me. This is something I want to do. So I love writing and now I love writing with images.

Amjad Al Rasheed: When I was 10 years old my mother asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I was like, “I want to be a director.” Which is funny, at that age I didn’t know what director meant, but I knew that I wanted to tell stories. We used to watch black and white movies, Egyptian movies. And that was this thing: I want this world, this is what I want to do, to tell stories. I felt the urge of: I want to communicate with people and to communicate visually with them. I started following my dream basically, and today I’m here.

Speaking of dreams, Asmae just won the best film honor [the Golden Star or Étoile d’Or] in Marrakesh [marking the first time the honor went to a Morrocan film]. 

Asmae El Moudir: Yeah, it was a dream. It was really a dream. When I was 10, I was watching the [awards] ceremony up close on the TV. And then I told my father to give me the tea like a winner. After 15 years, I just got the first award for Morocco. It was really nice. Becoming a filmmaker, it’s not a job. I mean, we want to [convey] something from inside. I try to draw, but I cannot even draw an apple. So writing with the light is better.

Ali Alkalthami: It’s kind of different in Saudi Arabia, because I guess we didn’t have cinema, so the aspiration to be a filmmaker wasn’t in the mindset. But stories always gravitated to me. I guess my father used to be the storyteller of the tribe. I always looked at him when he was sitting with 50 men around and he would tell stories that were entertaining, and I would just listen to him. The whole culture in Saudi is revolved around stories. And the internet came, so I delved into translating that oral culture … So it is there: trying to experiment with mixing the two, mixing that tradition of stories in Saudi and with the techniques of cinema.

Amanda Nell Eu: I think for me it was really genre cinema, it was horror films. When I was a young kid, I remember going to sleepovers with my friends and forcing them to video record Texas Chainsaw Massacre at like 1:00 a.m., and then the parents would find out and they’re like, “you can’t watch this.” I’m like, “why not? I love this.” So it started there and, of course, being an Asian person, this is not a thing you do, right? Directing. So I went to do graphic design for my degree because I always loved working in visuals. But to this day, I still don’t know how to use Photoshop, because I was just making short films, animations, music videos. So I was like, okay, I have to do this. So yeah, that was how I started.

Tell us a little bit about what’s important about the movie you brought to the festival — how does it exemplify your storytelling voice? How does it encapsulate what you are doing and what you like to do?

El Moudir: Bringing films to the festivals, for me it’s like looking for audiences. When we change festivals, we change the audience. Karlovy Vary, it’s not Toronto. Toronto is not Marrakesh. And then it’s very important that you just listen to the audience. We make films for the audience.

Eu: Yeah, I totally agree. It’s been such a nice year to travel with the film, to do Q&As, to talk to the audience from so many parts of the world — from the U.S. to Europe, and then also Southeast Asia. And to see the themes that I’m talking about. It’s a very Malaysian film, and I know when I show it in Southeast Asia, the Southeast Asians are like, “Oh, we get it. We see this.” But also to show it in somewhere like Norway or even Cannes, and people are like, “I can relate to this character,” who is a young girl from Malaysia climbing trees and stuff. It’s amazing that they can relate to it, and so I think that’s been really special.

What are some of the universal themes that you think people connect with there?

Eu: For Tiger Stripes, it’s for people who felt like they had to live up to society’s expectations, or they felt like they were ashamed of their full selves. And it’s to kind of push and fight for that and to be proud of who you are and stand tall like a tiger.

Alkalthami: I guess Mandoob was very necessary because it talks about the present, the present of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh more specifically, because I lived in Riyadh city for 40 years, and tell this story about this loner, the guy who delivers food around the city and gets access to houses and people without being noticed. But at the same time, I wanted to do it as a thriller and a genre piece — [how] he drives at night, his lack of sleep and all of that. But at the same time, I think it’s the marginalized character who is in the center of attention of the film. I wanted to do that. I guess we live in this vast world of communication, but loneliness is still there. You know what I mean? So I wanted to shine a light on that subject matter. So that connects with people, I am hoping, at least in Saudi, in Riyadh.

Al Rasheed: For Inshallah A Boy, it’s a social thriller exploring some human rights. I can say that because it’s talking about specific laws in Jordan and in the Middle East and in the Arab world that some women might face and will make some troubles for them to have their own rights, like a home or raising their own children, and in a society that will ask women to have a boy in order for these laws to be different, to change all the laws. So yes, I’m talking about very specific law in my country, maybe, but I was also trying to echo it around — to have an echo around the world. I noticed that when I was again in Cannes, in Toronto and wherever I screened the film, I felt like the connection, especially from women in the West and around the world, that they feel the character and they feel the struggle, but they also can reflect their own struggles in it.

And this is very important for me, that it’s not only about our area, it’s about women’s rights around the world. I feel like we still, in the West, for example, women don’t have the same salary like men, for example. So what I want to say is that I believe none of us is free until we are all free. If a woman is struggling in the Middle East and there is an illusion of freedom in the West for women, until we are all free, nothing will change.

And women’s rights, and the stories of women, Kaouther, is something that you obviously have experience with…

Ben Hania: My last movie, Four Daughters, it’s a documentary. I worked on it for five years. And I was thinking it’s a small documentary, and then it went to Cannes in the main competition. And we all know that Cannes, they don’t like documentaries. Especially [in] the main competition. Because the last movie I think was Fahrenheit 9/11, from Michael Moore. This year they took two documentaries. I said yes, finally! It’s the revenge of reality. So yeah, it was amazing.

We love cinema, especially me, because we feel empathy. And I think in our world today we need a lot of empathy. Because we live in such cruel world where the word empathy — we have selective empathy. So that’s why telling stories so important. That’s why I think that every movie is important. I don’t know who said that every a movie is your own propaganda [but] I believe in it, because it translates your point of view. So that’s why all our propagandas added together can give us a wider vision.

Baz, I wondered before the festival if some people might not travel to the region because of the ongoing conflict in another part of the Middle East. And then you were one of the people who said, “I made a conscious decision to come.” Tell us a little bit about what your thought process was and why you felt it was important to come and come at this time.

Luhrmann: I think it’s been said much more eloquently, much more to the point than I can say it, which is: In a cruel world, in a world of selective empathy, that the most important thing is to double down on storytelling. I think this was a beautiful thing to hear, your desire to tell stories. Because film is just one way of doing it. It can be theater, it can be… You tried novel writing, it can be graphic work. But it came from childhood, it came from something in your childhood, you just had to get it out. And as you’ve referred to it, as your own personal propaganda, your own personal point of view. I mean where politics and mechanical solutions fail us more than ever, the storytelling humanizes. It brings empathy. Because you can talk about a situation, you can talk about it politically, but that’s…

Ben Hania: A statistic. It’s worse.

Luhrmann: Yes, worse. But in the end, I watch movies from 12 o’clock at day to 12 o’clock at night. I’ve been doing that every single day [as the head of the jury here]. Today I have four movies to watch. I’ve never done it before. But I haven’t seen a movie that I haven’t had an emotional response to. The humanity, the people. They’re people. It doesn’t matter who they are and where they’re from. And that is so much more powerful than people getting around a table and yelling at each other with some political agenda. I didn’t feel there was a choice to back out, because I thought if not now, when?

Alkalthami: Especially what’s happening now in the Middle East. And all the coverage of it, it’s more of a necessary for filmmakers to actually present more stories and [use] their own voice and narrative. Because if you feel things are just misconstrued or misrepresented, it’s your authentic voice that is important now.

Luhrmann: Yeah. And by the way, there’s a word called the media or the news. There’s a worldwide web, there’s clickbait, there’s la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And to a certain degree, that is storytelling. It’s never the truth. It’s somebody’s truth. But unfortunately, somebody’s truth is generally motivated now by a machine. I mean, there’s a machine inside that worldwide web that goes, if the clickbait goes like that…

Eu: And it’s louder, yeah.

Luhrmann: Wow, it’s louder. Right? … And I’m not saying I’m retiring. I’m retiring.

All: No!

Luhrmann: But no, in all honesty, you are all young filmmakers, and I find it so uplifting. But I’ve been locked in a dark room, very, very cold in a good way, wearing a ski jacket in the hottest place in the world. But loving it, actually loving it. Because I’ve been looking at these movies that are so diverse, so different. Quite often there are underlying thematics in them that are quite similar. And what I love about what you guys are doing so far, what I’ve seen, is that you are blending genres. You’re taking a serious issue that’s very present, but you’re also blending it with quite entertaining genres. I think that’s so smart. Back in my day, that’s something I liked to do, but it wasn’t really that well accepted. It was like too much confetti.

But just to put a nail in this, [in the media] … it’s set up to an editor and they go, “How do we get our station to get the most noise?” Versus [a filmmaker] who spent five years with a family telling a story. Now it’s still going to be your point of view, but you’ve spent the time to dig into the humanity of it.

Ben Hania: But that’s why when you were talking about media, I think that media instills something like amnesia, because it’s so fast.

Luhrmann: Yes, correct. Absolutely.

Ben Hania: That’s why we need literature, that’s why we need movies. Because it’s the memory of people.

Luhrmann: One thousand percent.

Ben Hania: So it’s very important to tell our stories. It’s like an obligation almost. On my shoulders.

Luhrmann: They’ll say, “Where’d you get your information from?” But it’s not really information, because that’s stuff coming through the tube or through TV or on your phone…

Ben Hania: It’s becoming a show.

Luhrmann: It’s a show.

Ben Hania: It’s a business.

Luhrmann: This is a gargantuan shift in what that mechanic used to be. That mechanic used to be people who used to go and report. Report meant gather the information, collect it to the best of your ability, present it without your presence. And now it’s become, “Ladies and gentlemen…” And that is a show. Well, if it’s a show, call it a show, be a show.

What I like about drama or dramatic documentary, with drama, you are saying: It’s a big lie. I’ve just made this all up. I am telling a story, right? It’s my story, but I’m telling the big lie to reveal a greater truth. As opposed to what I see coming. When you say it’s a big show, it’s not only a big show, it’s being presented as the truth.

Ben Hania: The truth.

Luhrmann: Oh, it’s so upsetting. I mean, so upsetting.

Ben Hania: Do you know where does it come from?

Luhrmann: Yes, I do.

Ben Hania: You are American, so-

Luhrmann: I’m not American, I’m Australian.

Ben Hania: Sorry, yeah.

Luhrmann: I mean, I don’t want to put out on this table a clickbait that’s going to overshadow the very important things that you’re all saying. That’s another subject. But I very much know where that started from. I’ll tell you something, it was a great film that I love from the 1970s called Network.

Ben Hania: I love [it].

Luhrmann: But you know what guys? It was a satire. And you know, it’s an Australian actor who posthumously won, Peter Finch. He won the Oscar for best actor. And the satire is: Imagine a crazy world where there’s conflict actually in the Middle East, where there’s an oil crisis, and the guy’s just a news reader. And he just reads the news, but he’s old. And [he’s told] “I’m sorry, I have to get rid of you. You’re too boring, we need someone cooler and hipper.” And he goes mad. He starts yelling, “I’m as mad as hell.” And they go, “That’s entertaining. Why don’t we make [that] the news?”

Ben Hania: We can sell it.

Luhrmann: Let’s make it entertainment. And this was hilarious and satirical, except today it’s real.

Eu: It’s real.

Luhrmann: And it’s not fun.

Alkalthami: And he went viral, in today’s terms.

Luhrmann: It absolutely went viral. He went viral. And it’s just, then it was a joke. Now it’s just actually…

Alkalthami: It’s reality.

Luhrmann: I think it’s bordering on, if not an evil, one of the most destructive forces.

Ben Hania: I totally agree.

So the media person here is going to ask a question. (Laughs.) I find it great how you guys all talked about telling your own stories. And I think I picked this up from you as well, Baz: You learn so much. You see something, you say, “Oh, I wasn’t aware of this part of the world. I wasn’t aware of this thinking, or of this cultural approach to things.” I wanted to ask the reverse question. In Hollywood, you sometimes see how Muslims or people from Middle East are portrayed. Is there anything that ever annoys you or where you say, this is so wrong or so off?

Ben Hania: Yeah. I had a shock when I watched — it’s a wonderful movie, it’s very well done, but when you watch it with my eyes from this region — Lawrence of Arabia. I was like, “Okay. Why is the protagonist a white man? Why you are talking about the Arabian Revolution in those terms?” I mean, it’s a great movie, it had a lot of impact. And I was thinking that maybe one day, we should tell a story with the protagonist from the Arab Revolution, not the secondary character.

Luhrmann Can I comment on that? When I grew up in a very small country town in Australia, we had a gas station and a farm, but for a moment, we ran the local cinema. Through tragic circumstances, but my father ran the cinema. And one of the films that came there was Lawrence of Arabia. I loved the film. I thought it was amazing.

Ben Hania: It’s wonderful.

Luhrmann: But I do want to get to the point you made, because it’s a very, very good point. I’ve just had a recent experience of it. What was wonderful about it, it left with me this great love of this part of the world. Now, you’re absolutely right, because the film’s made in the ’60s. There are worse things in it.

Ben Hania: I know.

Luhrmann: You didn’t touch upon someone like Alec Guinness…

Ben Hania: Because I love the movie.

Luhrmann: Alec Guinness is a great actor, but he plays King Faisal. He’s an English actor playing King Faisal. And Anthony Quinn is Mexican, and I mean, there’s some of the worst makeup in cinema. Right? But let’s just hold it for a moment, because I think what you’re really getting at, and by the way, I love your idea and you should be the one to do it. The Lawrence story is a fascinating one because I think the gestalt in the movie is that in the end, Lawrence has a messianic complex. He falls in love with the place. The British and all of the West are going like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll look after you. We just want to get rid of the Ottomans.” I mean, it’s the Ottoman Empire. They get rid of the Ottomans, and Lawrence thinks he’s become an Arab leader and he’s mad. And he goes, “Right. I’ve been promised at the Arab League that you’re all going to get a fair…” It’s going to be handed over, really, to the traditional owners of the land. And they’re double-crossed.

That leads directly to where we are today. So on that level, it’s great. But I’ve just revisited a film I did called Australia, [for the limited series Faraway Downs]. And what I tried to do, whether I was successful or not, was take an old Gone With the Wind-like movie, like an old melodrama, but flip it and tell it from the point of view of a First Nations Indigenous child. Those children were taken from their families because of mixed race and locked up in compounds. And it was totally destructive to the culture, the Indigenous culture. Now I’m not saying I did it right or I did it particularly well, and maybe I’m not the person to do it, but … Lawrence is a fascinating story. He had an amazing relationship with Ali. So where’s the Ali version? … It’s your jobs. You have the power to do it. Now, by the way, just saying this, I just saw amazing film studios down in AlUla. They’re waiting for that version of this movie, so get to work.

Alkalthami: I feel like the challenges or the things that we face is putting all the Middle East in one thing, which it is not. We are not. We are totally different. And at the same time always presenting Saudi as the rich country or the extreme country, and it’s not. It’s our responsibility to say so. But I do humor a lot in my films. I think humor kind of diffuses tension and makes your story better if it’s sensitive [subject matter]. So I think one of the challenges is breaking stereotypes around your culture. But sometimes I ask my question, is it really necessary to think about that just to think about your story? And if you are honest to your story, that would be the truth, or your truth. You know what I mean?

Luhrmann: Hey Ali, can I ask a quick question? I’m just intrigued by this, because I absolutely agree. What is going on in this region … there’s a huge generalization in the West of just sort of going like, that’s one place, it’s all the same.

Al Rasheed: It’s very annoying.

Luhrmann: It’s annoying. But do you think … there’s a generalization that America is just one big place? Because people who live in Florida generally might be different from people who live in New York who might be different from people who live in Idaho.

Al Rasheed: Actually, it’s very interesting, because it’s much easier not to understand the other and to generalize the idea of a stereotype, like all Arabs look the same, all Americans look the same, or they act the same…

Luhrmann: …act the same or they think the same.

Al Rasheed: I don’t know if it’s a new [term] that people are using: Arab cinema, which is music to my ears. Because I have a film from Jordan; she has a film from Tunisia; she has a film from Morocco; he has a film from Saudi. It’s like, yes, collectively we are Arabs, but it’s a colorful, very colorful story. She has her own way to tell a story from her own culture and background. There is common stuff between us, but it’s totally different than Jordan, Tunisia. And I have my own type of storytelling and my own way to communicate a story with my own background, and I was trying to reflect my society through these stories. So what’s so interesting with cinema is that we are maybe coming from the same region, but we have definitely different stories, which is, again, the magic of cinema.

Luhrmann: I’ve seen some of the movies. I know that to be true. While some of the themes may be central, the diversity and the difference. And that gets back to, and then I will have to pop off because I’ve got to go and see movies, it goes back to what you said in the beginning. As children, you were compelled to tell a story of growing up hearing your father or wanting to draw a story or feeling isolated, whatever that was. And then we spend the rest of our lives trying to hang on to that purity, really, our compulsion to tell them and to keep the way we tell them ours, as an individual.

I’ve got one expectation I will leave you all with. Please, before I retire, make sure that a film from the Arab region wins best picture. That is your job. I’ll see you guys at the Oscars.

Ben Hania: All of us, no? [Laughs]

Luhrmann: Sure, why not?

[As jury head, Luhrmann leaves to go watch a Red Sea International Film Festival competition film.]

What didn’t we discuss that’s important to you or that you would like to talk about?

El Moudir: We are really happy to have all of us with the films. Achieving a film, it’s not easy.

Alkalthami: It’s a miracle.

Ben Hania: I have this nihilist thing. I’m sorry, guys, but sometimes when I see what is happening right now in Gaza, I think why we are doing all this? It’s about ending the life of people. We are talking about life. So I get in this nihilist path where nothing looks to me important. We will die all. This planet will perish. Nothing will stay. I’m sorry to put it this way, but this is my mood these days. So I’m trying to smile, I’m trying to present the movie, but it’s very hard. So I’m sorry about this. But it’s something very difficult.

Alkalthami: We live in a tough time. Hang on to your films and keep telling stories. it is really important.

Eu: I totally agree. In a time like this, it’s like we were talking about earlier on, stories are the way to hopefully bring people together. The sad thing is that we need to keep fighting for audiences to watch these stories. That’s the problem. Because this clickbait crap is taking over, and it’s like, I’d love to have more people in the cinema watching stories from everywhere, from all our mini propagandas, personal propagandas. Because I don’t know, it helps me a lot. It helps people who actually do listen to stories, like listen to people, listen to others and not the loud voice that’s dominating everything.

Alkalthami: Yeah. And it’s our duty, through all the violence and stuff, to actually own our narrative because there is so much misleading stuff and lies spread around. It’s very valid for us and important for us to keep telling these stories because that’s a duty, I guess. But that’s it.