Hollywood A-Listers Walk Red Carpet in Saudi Arabia for Red Sea Film Festival's Closing Night Gala

A popular star of Hindi films for a decade with over 80 million Instagram followers, Alia Bhatt, best known internationally for her 2022 double Gangubai Kathiawadi and RRR, has fast become one of India’s hottest exports. 

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor “The Pianist” and “King Kong” star Adrien Brody spoke at the Red Sea Film Festival Friday about a wide variety of creative pursuits, including making music from popcorn in the 1990s. “I liked the sound of the kernels of popcorn hitting the aluminium lid of the pan and so I set my microphone up and recorded it and then I sampled it and put on some reverb,” he told the audience in Saudi Arabia. “It went pok-a-pok-a-pok.” Something of a prodigy, he was cast as a lead in a TV movie “Home at Last” when he was only 15 and later became the youngest actor to win the best male lead Oscar.

The third annual Red Sea Film Festival handed out its Yusr Awards on Thursday night, with Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames taking Best Feature and Farah Nabulsi’s The Teacher scoring a pair of wins including Best Actor for Saleh Bakri. See the full list below.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor Andrew Garfield spoke to an audience rich in Spider-Man fans about his career at the Red Sea Film Festival Thursday, sitting alongside Saudi producer and Red Sea Film Foundation CEO Mohammed Al Turki. The two have known each other since Garfield starred in Ramin Bahrani’s 2014 drama “99 Homes,” which Al Turki produced. “I’m currently out of work,” Garfield quipped.

Nick Holdsworth At the closing ceremony of the 3rd edition of the Red Sea Film Festival Thursday, which took place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in front of an audience that included Hollywood stars Nicolas Cage, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry, Jason Statham and Adrien Brody, the Golden Yusr for best film and a $100,000 cash prize went to Pakistani-Canadian horror film “In Flames,” directed by Zarrar Kahn. The director said that the indie movie was shot for “just $300,000 — the size of a Red Sea Fund production grant.” He urged “everyone who gets a grant to go make a movie, because this was made for nothing.” The Silver Yusr prize for best feature film went to Tarsem Singh for “Dear Jassi.” The film, an India/Canada/U.S.

Avengers: Endgame, after she stopped watching Marvel movies “at some point”.The actor, who played Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, explained why she hadn’t seen the 2019 superhero crossover blockbuster during a career retrospective talk at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia.Speaking at the festival on Wednesday (December 6) about Marvel movies (via Deadline), Paltrow said: “To be honest, I stopped watching them at some point. I’ve never seen Endgame. I can’t keep track of who’s what.

Nicolas Cage doesn’t really care if you know he’s related to Francis Ford Coppola. 

Andrew Garfield shared insights into his early days in Hollywood, experiences working on the Spider-Man franchise and thoughts about Red Sea International Festival Festival during his masterclass at the festival today. 

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor “A lot of Goop,” one of the attendees remarked on leaving Gwyneth Paltrow’s In Conversation talk taking place at the Red Sea Film Festival. “A bit lopsided,” another agreed. Many of the gathered gripped Marvel posters and wore Marvel T-shirts, but everyone was happy to welcome an actor whose career has spanned films as diverse as “Se7en,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Shakespeare in Love,” and the biggest applause came when she said that this was her first time in Saudi Arabia.

“Entrepreneurship and acting are very similar. Both require the same kind of energy,” Goop CEO and Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow told a crowd during a career retrospective this evening at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. 

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Oscar-winning actor Halle Berry had a strike of inspiration on the flight to Saudi Arabia, where she gave a career-spanning conversation at the third edition of the Red Sea Film Festival. The flight, she said, led her to figure out what she wants to direct next: “It’s a love story at its core but it deals with the supernatural, time travel and the future.” This will mark Berry’s sophomore feature after 2020’s MMA drama “Bruised.” When asked about her first directing experience, the actor was frank, labelling the entire process “hell.” “Because I was a woman, and a Black woman, the treatment I received and the things I had to put up with were unconscionable,” she said.

MBC Studios is developing a series adaptation of popular Saudi writer Osamah Almuslim’s best-selling debut horror novel Khawf (Fear).

Saudi Arabia‘s Red Sea International Film Festival is midway through its third edition, running November 30 to December 9 in the palatial surroundings of the seafront Ritz Carlton in the port city of Jeddah.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor Some of the most powerful figures in Saudi film gathered at the Ritz Carlton in Jeddah for a cocktail party hosted by Film AlUla and Stampede Ventures in partnership with Variety last night. Figures such as Saudi producer and film industry pioneer Faisal Baltyuor and Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy were spotted along with Zeinab Abu Alsamh, general manager of MBC Studios Saudi Arabia. Stampede Ventures head Greg Silverman was celebrating the $350 million three-year deal just signed with Film AlUla, which will bring 10 projects to the region.

Pan Middle East and North African film distributor Front Row Filmed Entertainment has promoted staffers Nicolas Torloting, Carine Chaiban and Elie Touma to partners. 

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor While introducing the Middle East and North Africa premiere of John Woo’s “Silent Night” at the Red Sea Film Festival, actor Joel Kinnaman emphasized the rare opportunity to have “everyone in the world watching the same film.” The actor is referring to the fact that Woo’s first U.S. film in 20 years features no language — no spoken language, that is — and so needs no subtitles. The characters in the revenge thriller have not a single line of dialogue throughout the film, with the only snippets of speech coming from diegetic music, a few brief radio broadcasts and phone messages.

Will Smith has revealed that the development of I Am Legend 2 is moving at pace, with both him and Michael B. Jordan on board and a first script delivered.

Halle Berry and Gwyneth Paltrow are among the high-profile names that have been added to the popular ‘In-Conversation’ sidebar section at the third edition of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list of attendees.

The stars are stepping out for the 2023 Red Sea International Film Festival.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor The third edition of the Red Sea Film Festival, taking place in Jeddah between Nov. 30 – Dec. 9, will be the culmination of a highly successful funding cycle for the Red Sea Film Foundation.