Discoveries from Saudi Arabia World Cinema

A film by Abdullah Al-Muheisen

And a father sets out to inspect a new house in alhamadaniyyah. What follows drifts into his son's inner world where absence , ,unease , and unanswered questions beginning to take shape. Something about the decision doesn't sit right but no one sees it

Visions of construction in contemporary Doha neatly express its nearly manic pace of growth, while various voices from the community describe the city’s progress, lament the loss of nature that goes with urbanisation, consider the beauty of the new buildings, and discuss Doha’s cosmopolitan personality. A sort of travelogue around Qatar’s capital in development, ‘Voices from the Urbanscape’ is an apt reflection of a burgeoning 21st-century city with a mission, and a tribute to its multicultural success.

A Lebanese filmmaker (Karim) travels from New York to Beirut to conduct research for a film that he wants to make about blind children in the mountains of Lebanon. He arrives to Beirut with a condition that had been affecting his eyes and causes him to go straight into surgery, temporarily blinding him with patches covering his eyes. He uses the healing time to reflect, write and spend time with his family. The filmmaker then begins to visit the blind institute where he will conduct his research and attempts to cast someone to play himself in parallel, which doesn't go as planned. Little does the institute know that Karim has no treatment to pitch but continues to visit the classrooms and attend in order to find his characters.

not there yet

A young man ignores his father’s warning about reckless drifting. Driven by defiance, he joins his close friend for a dangerous night of drifting, chasing adrenaline and thrill. However, things take an unexpected turn, leading to consequences he never anticipated.

An exploratory film that reviews the new experience of the microbiologist Dr. Hossam Zawawi and speleologist Dr. Francesco Sauro. These two scientists take us on a journey of exploration to conduct new scientific research to study microbes in caves..

The play tells of three brothers: Abbas I, Abbas II and Abbas III, where Abbas I accuses Abbas III of madness in order to be able to seize his inheritance from the land he owns, but the appearance of Abbas II confuses all the plans of Abbas I.

A generous and lyrical continuation of Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios’ interest in the ties between ecology, feminism, and collective organization, this documentary showcases the radical politics of a Lebanese farming cooperative and the citizens of Jinwar, a women-only village in the north of Syria.

A young man and woman form an intense bond when they are assigned to launch an armed action against an oil-refinery in the North African desert.

Gripped by fear of his father, a man spends the last day of his life trying to evade a shadowy figure and cycling through volatile emotions.

The Refuge Project is a multimedia chronicle of human stories from the European Refugee Crisis, focused on humanity and hope.

Amal, who does not live up to her name... who wanted to complete her university education despite her brother's refusal and his desire to marry her to her cousin after her father's death, only for fate to throw her into the house of her beloved husband after she ran away from home and believed that he would be fair to her, even a little, and that there were indeed things worth living for, but they remained mere suspicions and illusions... and all this because she is a woman... yes, a woman who loved with all her heart and left everything behind, but she did not take into account that the doubt in her husband's heart would be his only obsession towards her

A film that encapsulates the most significant events in the Kingdom Saudi Arabia in 2022 -a year marked by accelerated modernization and development on both domestic and international fronts. Through interviews with decision-makers and experts, the film covers various domains, including politics, economics, culture, and sports, with behind-the-scenes insights. The year 2022 opened with the announcement of The Founding Day, commemorating 295 years, giving the film its title.

A year has passed since the death of my mother and two of my sisters.

After returning from the city to their hometown, Saud and Hamoud grow frustrated with how the townspeople take advantage of them for being university students, pushing the two friends to make a desperate decision — to run away from the town.

Moonlight, Waves, Wishes and ENTITY.

DESERT MEMORY Director by Ali Aldmjani

Shadi lives in a horse-farm with his disabled and strict father, and with his beloved aging horse, Rosa. The status-quo of their daily farm life is broken when Noa arrives at the farm with her mother for the weekend, and Shadi discovers his father's intentions to kill Rosa.

In the wake of a viral outbreak throughout Bahrain, a group of strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they must unite to ward off the undead plague.

This 'document' is attributed to a Lebanese Army intelligence officer, Operator #17, who was assigned to monitor the Corniche, a seaside boardwalk in Beirut. From 1996 onwards, and for some unknown reasons, the officer decided to videotape the sunset instead of his assigned targets.

Atwa is a Saudi short mystery film directed by the young filmmaker Abdulaziz Al-Shalahi and starring Khalid Al-Saqer. The film earned critical acclaim, with Al-Shalahi winning Best Director at the Saudi Film Festival, while Al-Saqer received the Best Actor award at the same festival for his performance in the film.

By the sea, on a public beach in Beirut frequented only by men, Reda, Adel and Quassem are not waiting for a miracle: they are watching their entire country fall to ruin.

The movie tells different stories of different married couples

A Saudi Actor trying to perform the " Swan Song " in his own way.

Directed by Hani Khalifa.

Kiden is a girl in South Sudan going to school. Conflict arises when her mother would rather Kiden be married than continue going to school.

The film revolves around the year 2015, surrounded by "Da'ash" a Syrian village whose parents suffer under torture and near death. One of the families (father - Ayman Zeidan) has to fight another kind of struggle to spare his family from death.

A Kuwaiti short film on Youtube by Aziz Bader. It features a guy fighting with his inner-self to overcome a dark side of himself that he despises, engaging in a philosophical dialogue explaining the necessity of the existence of that part.

Thousands of three-wheeled motorized rickshaws - called tuk-tuks - zip through the frenetic streets of Cairo everyday, driven by industrious young men, many of them not even teenagers. Across gorgeously photographed sun-drenched streets, Tuk-tuk follows Abdallah, Sharon and Bika, who, while too young to shave or even obtain a legal license, are forced to drive to feed their families. Besieged on all sides by police, thieves and other taxis, the boys take every chance to find a happy diversion or fleeting escape from the prison of poverty. Pulsating with comedy and danger, the film illustrates the resilient outlook of three children who have to become adults before their time, and their struggle to hold on to some semblance of childhood.

Osama said, "I often took walks with Luna. We roamed around Damascus, where nothing could compare to the smell of bread and jasmine in the morning. Sometimes, Luna would tell me stories about wonderful cities."

When Leila, a young doctor, returns to her village in south Lebanon, she finds it badly damaged after the 1993 Israeli attack. Israeli bombing during this episode razed 50 villages and left half a million civilians homeless, causing a flood of refugees into Beirut. Many of those who fled south Lebanon have not returned, choosing instead to live a scavenging existence in bombed-out buildings in the capital, where they’re out of range of the Israeli-occupied “security zone” in the south. Through Leila’s relationship with her family and the women and children of the surrounding villages, we get to know the hopes and dreams of the people who have remained in south Lebanon as they work to rebuild their homes and their lives.

Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem explores the work of photographer Hashem el Madani, who has run a commercial photography studio in southern Lebanon for the last five decades. After spending years photographing people in front of their shops, in public squares or at the beach, el Madani opened the studio in response to his community’s desire to appear before the camera. Moving between el Madani’s studio in Saïda and the Arab Image Foundation – an image archive in Beirut now housing the majority of el Madani’s photographic collection – the film examines the changing sites, status and function of photographic practice and preservation though various analogue and digital media.

A journalist moves into a mysterious seven-storey building, each floor symbolising one of the seven deadly sins. As he ascends each floor, he finds himself on a journey full of twists, turns, and trials.

From Rent Woes to Mosque Encounters: Saleh's Garage Sale Hustle turns to an unforgettable journey.

Swedish-Eritrean radio host Meron Estefanos produces her weekly program at home in Stockholm where she broadcast, devoted entirely to the hundreds of Eritrean refugees held hostage in the Egyptian Sinai Desert. The Bedouins kidnap Eritreans making their way to Israel and demand large ransoms from their families. We follow Meron in her attempts to turn the tide by calling the hostages and kidnappers alike during her radio show. The film focuses on the stories of two hostages: A) Hiriyti was pregnant when she got kidnapped. We hear the young woman talking with her husband Amaniel in Tel Aviv, who is doing everything he can to free his wife and their baby from the torture camp. B) The ransom for 20-year-old Timnit has been paid, but her brother haven't heard anything from her since her flight to the Egyptian-Israeli border. The battle for Hiriyti's release and the search for Timnit takes Meron to Sinai. There, she stumbles on the marks left by the many atrocities.

“Not Just Your Picture” tells the story of two young German-Palestinian siblings, Ramsis and Layla Kilani, who had their life shattered one early morning during the summer 2014 when their father, Ibrahim, together with his second wife and their five young children, was killed by an Israeli airstrike during the attacks on Gaza. Thrusted into an accelerated process of politicization and rediscovery of their Palestinian roots, the two struggle to find justice for their family while trying to make sense of a political reality that not only allows for such atrocities to happen, but even attempts to silence any criticism of it.

The play follows Hashem, an employee in a Cairo-based company, who works in one of its plants in Upper Egypt. Hashem travels to Cairo, hosted by his brother Fathalla, hoping to get moved to the company's headquarters. On his quest, Hashem visits the company's president at his house, and experiences a series of comic situations.