Cinema of Saudi Arabia

The cinema of Saudi Arabia is a fairly small industry that only produces a few feature films and documentaries every year.

In December 2017, the Board of Directors of the General Commission for Audiovisual Media in Saudi Arabia agreed to issue licenses to those wishing to open cinemas in the Kingdom.

[11] Cinemas first started to appear in Saudi Arabia during the 1930s, when employees of Aramco (then called the Arabian American Oil Company) installed screens in their residential compounds in Dhahran.

In the early 1950s, ahwash (courtyard) cinemas emerged in several Saudi cities, which were screenings held in open spaces in residential areas.

[12] In the 1970s, a number of Saudi athletic clubs contained movie, and they were not considered un-Islamic, though they were seen as contrary to Arab cultural norms.

In the 1980s, there were some improvised movie halls in Saudi Arabia, most of which were in Jeddah and Mecca, where Egyptian, Indian, and Turkish films were screened without government intervention.

As a political response to an increase in Islamist activism, including the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the government closed all cinemas and theaters.

[16] Following the public screenings, the cinema ban was put into question as the demand for movie theaters in Saudi Arabia increased.

[17] On 11 December 2017, the Saudi Arabian Minister of Culture and Information announced that public movie theaters would be allowed by 2018.

[5] The first public film screening was Black Panther beginning on 18 April 2018 for five days in a 620-seat cinema owned by AMC Theatres in Riyadh's King Abdullah Financial District which was originally intended to be a symphony hall.

Wadjda was selected as the Saudi Arabian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards - the first time the country made a submission for the Oscars[23] - but it was not nominated.

[28] In 2020, the world’s leading entertainment streaming platform, Netflix, acquired exclusive rights to 6 Saudi short films produced by Telfaz 11 Studios.

These films included: "Hallucinated," "Little Bird," "Red Circle," "Covida the 19th," "Alrufea," "The Day I Lost Myself," "Acceptance Land," "Hide and Seek," "Whisper Down the Lane," "The Palm Witch," and "The Jakar.