Discoveries from Saudi Arabia World Cinema

Six strong-willed women whose adventurous streak changed the face of film industry in early twentieth century Egypt – a time when the country was, despite the liberal ripples, still steeped in conservative tradition. The film shows how these women, different as they were in class and social background, broke taboos and dismissed conventional wisdom to fulfill their overpowering passion for filmmaking. Women Who Loved Cinema takes us to the past and brings us, seamlessly, to the present day. Aziza ... Fatema ... Behidja ... Amina ... Assia … Mary... theirs is a story that will remain indelibly etched in the memory of Egyptian cinema.

During the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, invading forces sieged a group of Kuwaiti youths, who had only two choices: either to surrender, or to die for the sake of their homeland.

An intimate journey into the inner life of an aspiring athlete and the female weightlifting community of Alexandria. For 4 years, Zebiba goes through victories and defeats, including major losses that shape her, as she finds her way from dust to gold.

A Palestinian couple resorts to an unusual way to conceive as the husband is detained in an Israeli jail where visits are restricted.

Aljadel, a grieving Saudi teenager, refuses to participate in a chant with her middle-school choir honouring her deceased best friend. Meanwhile, the power hungry Main Teacher, rejects their permission to chant and decides instead to order the students to participate in an activity to re-enact the shrouding the dead. When Aljadel watches her friend being shrouded, her anger boils over and she rises to action, leading the rest of the girls to do the same.

Layabout, clandestine lover, small-time hood – Mousa has all kinds of skills. A refugee camp resident, this Palestinian does not give a damn about his father’s hard-won permit to work legally in the Israeli part of Jerusalem – he would rather earn a living stealing Israeli cars and selling them to Palestinian fences. Mousa is convinced that his future lies far away from all the violence and constraints that characterise life in the divided city; his heart, moreover, belongs to a married woman. Following the theft of a Passat one day he is given a brutal goingover by Palestinian militia-men. On closer inspection of the vehicle, he makes a discovery which suddenly makes apolitical Mousa of interest to all sides …

Five shorts come together under an ‘Untitled Omnibus feature’, led by five Saudi women directors. The tone of the Omnibus feature will be brought together under a unified vision to realise nuanced reflections on women-centered narratives.

The job of a powerful worker is sought by all of his dancer who works as a dancer and her classmate who works as a monologist at the Nunu Baltic.

An indie found footage style film out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that tells the tale of three young Saudis who set out to the notoriously haunted Madayen Saleh ruins to the far north of the Kingdom to investigate the myths and the truths behind the cursed place.

In Algiers, the shock duo made up of Inspector Tahar and his sidekick L'Apprenti lead the investigation in the footsteps of a formidable bandit named "La Souris".

'Sada AlMadhi' A program searches for and talks about Ibb civilization in Yemen, and about its Yemeni cultural role.

A fisherman lives alone. His days and nights are fraught with waiting. He rises with the sun and carries his anxieties and tools to the sea, where he fishes. He fishes until sunset without ever catching a fish. One day, he meets a passerby on the sea playing a mouth harmonica. The man feels compassion for him and tells him that he is fishing in a sea without fish, in a sea that is dead, but the fisherman does not even look at him.

Five young Qatari men, used to Twenty-first Century life in the Gulf, take on the ancient desert traditions of their forefathers. They’re physically and mentally pushed to their limits by a wise Desert Sheik in some of the most severe desert conditions on the planet. Learning ancient desert skills; they will face specific tests as individuals and as a group, and they will live through the same adversity as their ancestors. How will they survive?

Tangier has an open identity on the Strait of Gibraltar. The border here is a presence: it is water. Opposite, Spain. Candidates for illegal departure flock without interruption to Tangier. The film follows the adventure of a few ready to "burn" their identity, to cross or die...

The story revolves around a director/producer that directs movies with a low budget, with the help of the same cast. Everything is going smoothly with the film-making until one of his actors die while filming, and that is when everything goes wrong.

At the heart of Jeddah, "Hajeer" tells the captivating story of a young musician and composer from the 1960s, born into a family of musicians. Suddenly struck by an illness that renders him deaf; confronted and left to fend for himself, he does not give up. With authentic and deeply complex characters, this story addresses universal themes such as love, hope, resilience, and the struggle against prejudice, offering a unique perspective on life’s challenges. In this poignant drama of love and despair, Hajeer, revitalized by newfound strength, confronts the betrayal of his beloved Aalya and asserts his rights. Through his struggle, Hajeer composes a symphony of redemption, revealing the enduring imprint of eternal love.

Six Lebanese women representing three generations, each one still waiting for the man in her life who was kidnapped during the Lebanese Civil War and is still missing.

A coming of age story of a ten years old Moroccan orphan called Majid who discovers that he can't remember his parents faces anymore and he starts looking for a picture of them.

Presents the various stages in the production of wool and its transformation into yarn to make clothes, against the rhythm of the sound of the machines.

A seven-year-old child narrates the struggles of her nanny, Sumyati, who must navigate prejudice and cruel treatment from the family she works for.

Sayed is a defeated human being living in the slums of old Cairo where he is constantly bombarded with government propaganda. He crosses paths with an ancient Egyptian porter carrying a throne and wondering in search of his lost king. Now Sayed wants to be seated too 'even for 5 minutes to see how it feels'. This political allegory is a study of the inherent self-imposed oppression in third world nations.

The short film features an obsessed guy who is captured by an ad for breaking new pills that help in losing weight.

He literally falls from the sky. Azad, a young man carrying a little lamb in a suitcase, on his way to a new life: a wedding with a Dutch-Kurdish woman. The road to this wedding is an absurd, surprising and poetic one, with the young bloke being afflicted by all sorts of unexpected setbacks. What does he give up by coming over here and what does he gain by marrying a woman he has never met? In this allegorical film, the search for a better life is visualised in an intense way.

Taqasim, shot in the streets of Cairo, is a voyage to the hidden treasures of Arabic music and to the participation of Jewish musicians. With stylishly shot music and unforgettable back-ally jams played by Felix Mizrachi, Zehava Ben, Abraham Salman and others, this film brings classical Arabic music raw and captivating.

Tarek and his mother Ghaydaa number among the tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border from Palestine, having been separated from Tarek's father amidst the chaos of the Six Day War. They ultimately settle at the Harir refugee camp, a makeshift home for a new generation displaced by conflict. Tarek dreams of being reunited with his father, and struggles to adapt to a new life far away from all he previously knew.

Monem returns to his country and meets his beloved Nabila again, but he is afraid that he will be hit by the curse of madness that afflicted his family members, as his parents have already died of madness, he visits his aunts and knows that they kill a number of the elderly shelter's members, and bury them in the basement of the shelter, and Monem seeks to get away from Nabila so as not to harm her.

In the heart of Riyadh... Souq Al-Zal, between heritage and simplicity, the film depicts the dreams that simple people desire in life.

A well-known intellectual is married to a woman who is obsessed with his wealth and power. He brings in a retired police officer to help him write his latest book. In the ensuing events, an affairir develops between the police officer and the professor’s wife.

An intimate portrait of daily life for a lonely, yet independent, woman who is hounded by her own relentless inner monologue. We are plunged into the melancholy, doubts, fears, and hesitations of the heroine through Sarah Taibah’s personal and moving performance, meticulously captured by Hisham Fadel.

Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out with his camera in search of the birth of filmmaking in Guinea. Charming and determined, he traces his country’s film heritage and history and reveals the importance of film archives.

Saudi girl Shihana, who used to enjoy life and look at the world from a lovely perspective, finds herself trapped in the darkest place of terror and destruction when she finds herself in the ISIS organization, and she tries to break out from the surrounding deaths.

The film describes the adventures of two young simple peasants en route to the capital. Their journey begins on a national road where the two friends hitchhike to Tunis. Their mishaps lead them from the olive groves of the Tunisian hinterland to the biggest hotels in the city of Hammamet.

A few shots taken at night.

a seeminglly crazy man talks to a freddy fazbear plushie.

The film focuses on a very conservative Namboodiri family in a very regressive social milieu. Ishti centres around two main characters, a 70-year-old Ramavikraman Namboodiri, who is a Vedic scholar who preserves the fire from a Somayagam to light his funeral pyre, and Sreedevi, his young, third wife. Sreedevi stands up against orthodoxy. She manages to inspire her husband’s son from another marriage to read and write. The conflict between these characters and those who revolve around their lives is what the film is generally about. It then also becomes a strong comment on the attempt to balance worldly desires and the rigidity of caste and tradition.

At a boarding house in Cairo, the stories of seven women from different walks of life intertwine as they search for love and fight societal injustice.

Walaa's only way to secure income for her family was to drive a Tuk-tuk in a male dominated environment . At the risk of being harassed and unaccepted, she embarks on a journey to fight for her livelihood.

A mechanic travels abroad and is abducted by a drug trafficker.

As a World Bank team visits an Egyptian village to investigate the transformation in agricultural management system, a TV presenter prepares a couple of episodes on the life of village women and a group of students visit a museum in Cairo with artificial figures that are supposed to resemble the life of Egyptian farmer.

Writer, director, and journalist Jawad Rhalib presents a timely exploration of Muslim identity in relation to artistic expression and harmful stereotypes, through archival footage, interviews, and evocative performances.

On a visit to a suburb of Cairo, Zahraa's daughter has a tragic accident, and the mother tries to help the daughter overcome the adversity and continue her education.

A short movie from the popular series

Set in the Najd region in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s; the story follows a girl called Najd who falls in love with her neighbor, but her father forces her to marry his boss despite the age gap between them.

Ahmed Chaoui is the prototype of the erased man who does not catch the eye of anyone, his life with his wife Anissa is a picture of cold happiness, started since 13 years ago, the couple has no children despite the burning desire to have... However, Ahmed, good and honest, never made a single step towards medicine for fear of wrinkling the sensibility of his wife, , and both do not know who of the two is sterile and seem to accommodate very well to this situation until the day when Ahmed crosses the path of a pregnant woman who asks him to drop her. Helpful by nature, he can not say no, and the woman drags him to a police station and riot police ... She accuses him of being the father of the baby she wears! Since Ahmed can not prove the opposite, he risks paying the price. He tells the disaster to his wife who jumps on the occasion and offers to adopt the child.

Story about the adventures and the friendship of two Japanese-Malaysian boys.

Kayan tells the story of a Saudi couple visiting friends in Egypt with their young baby. On their way home one night they get lost and decide to spend the night in a hotel. But this is no regular hotel and soon they find themselves held captive by the ghosts of their past. They are forced to confront their sins in a nail-biting journey to dawn