As cinema returned to Saudi Arabia this week after a gap of over three decades with the launch of its first movie theater in Riyadh, it has also offered a glimmer of hope to ecstatic Saudi filmmakers who say the move will help in making their profession a viable career option in the kingdom.
"The idea that now we actually have options [to become a filmmaker] and we have choices, this is something that we are extremely excited about," Saudi documentary filmmaker Danya Alhamrani proclaimed in a video provided to CGTN Digital by Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information’s Center for International Communications (CIC).
Alhamrani runs the Saudi production company Eggdancer Productions, which she launched with her business partner Dania Nassief in 2006. Alhamrani has worked on the Emmy Award winning US television series "The Short List" but is best known for getting her hometown Jeddah selected for the "FAN-atic" episode of popular American travel and food show "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations."
Alhamrani and Nassief are also the first women in Saudi Arabia to be allowed to own and manage a company without a male business partner, in a sign of ongoing reforms in the kingdom.
"Being a filmmaker in a country, [where] for a very long time filmmaking was not considered a viable career, has been tough in a sense that we were lacking a lot of mentorship. And this is why as a filmmaker I am always trying to improve myself and always trying to mentor a younger generation of filmmakers to try to be the best that we can be," said Alhamrani.
"Now there are more opportunities for young filmmakers and older filmmakers like myself to actually have an industry where we can produce the kind of content that we would love to produce – documentary films, fictional films, online content, trans-media projects and [other] ideas," she quipped.
Saudi filmmaker Danya Alhamrani's documentary "A Silent Revolution" premiered at an event in Berlin, Germany in February 2018. /Photo via Center for International Communication, Saudi Arabia
Elaborating on her own interest in making documentary films, Alhamrani said: "When people used to ask me when I was a kid 'Why do you want to be a filmmaker?', I would say because I want to see what actors look like without their makeup on. So it hit me [later] that my connection to filmmaking had always been a documentary connection. It was just that I didn't realize it until I had done other things."
Earlier this year, Alhamrani’s documentary "A Silent Revolution" premiered at an event in the German capital Berlin. The film features some 25 Saudi women pioneers who share their own experiences that help break the stereotypical portrayal of "oppressed" women in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
Some of the women featured in the documentary included the first Saudi women athletes who participated in the 2016 Olympics; the first Saudi woman to head a UN agency; the first woman editor of a national newspaper and another young woman mountaineer who has climbed Mount Qomolangma, the world's highest peak located at the border between China and Nepal.
"Before we started to work on 'A Silent Revolution' in 2013, Saudi women had been portrayed in international media in a way that they were not given their own voice. And we really wanted Saudi women to tell their own stories themselves," said Alhamrani, also emphasizing the mission behind starting her own production house, which is "to tell stories from Saudi Arabia."
Haifaa al Mansour, who made history five years ago when she became the first Saudi filmmaker to have shot a full-length feature film – the critically acclaimed "Wadjda" – in the kingdom, was ecstatic after the first screening.
A screenshot of a tweet from Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al Mansour.
"Witnessing such a huge, seismic shift take place in what was previously the most conservative society on the planet gives me faith in impossible dreams. I hope that one theater grows to hundreds, and thousands, and that Saudi Arabia grows to become an audience that filmmakers around the world scramble to win over," she wrote in a touching letter to Hollywood Reporter.
"When I saw a picture of the tickets on Instagram, with 'Black Panther' written in both English and Arabic, I got goose bumps," Mansour’s letter read.
"Cinemas were always one of those issues for us, like women driving, that I had resigned myself to believing would never change. But suddenly both issues are on their way to the dustbin of history, with women set to drive in a few short months," she added.
"It changes everything, for the better, and there is no going back from here," Mansour concluded.
Saudi Arabia is also set to make a debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival next month. Nine short films by young Saudi filmmakers have been chosen to be screened as part of the Short Film Corner on May 14 and 15.
Also, the newly-launched Saudi Film Council will participate at the prestigious festival where it will set up an exhibition stall and hold a range of industry events.
Read also: Cinema operators queue up as Saudi Arabia begins issuing licenses
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[Cover Photo: Saudi documentary filmmaker Danya Alhamrani. /Photo via Center for International Communication, Saudi Arabia]
