The Red Sea Film Foundation, the Saudi Arabian organization that overseas the kingdom’s Red Sea International Film Festival, has launched the Red Sea Fund, a $10 million fund aimed at supporting projects with directors from the Arab world and Africa.
The fund is set to back more than 100 feature projects in its first year, as well as episodic content, and will also be open to short films from Saudi nationals.
“Helping African and Arab cinema grow, that’s a very exciting responsibility,” said the festival’s newly-appointed artistic director, Edouard Waintrop. “That’s what the Red Sea Fund will do at every stage of the making of the chosen movies and episodic content. In providing more than 100 grants to help the development, production and post-production of movies across the Arab World and Africa, the Red Sea Fund will help cinema that is in full metamorphosis he continued."
The inaugural edition of the festival is due to take place on November 11 of this year in Al Balad, Jeddah’s historic downtown. To kick it off, the organization will host what they’ve dubbed ‘Red Sea Souk’, a marketplace and industry hub for the region. The ‘souk’ will see a marketplace complete with pitching sessions for more than 20 projects from the region as well as a films-in-progress workshop.
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