Unveiling Saudi Arabia’s Film Industry

ERIC: Again, this is about the film industry and we’re going to kind of stick to that. Not veering off to various sorts of politics. But you know, Vision 2030 is coming up quicker and quicker. It certainly is way off. And I was wondering if your family was involved in this at all. In 1972, there was a film, an experimental short film called The Broken Dam, and it really set a tone for Saudi Arabia to hopefully become this unbelievable filmmaking society. But it literally disappeared.

I think in 2023, about 18 million admissions, 443 films were released in local cinemas. I think the box office in Saudi Arabia now ranks 14th or 15th in the world. But one of my observations is they’re all American films. At least the vast majority. The three top highest-grossing films, I think, in Saudi Arabia [that year] were Oppenheimer, Sattar, Mission: Impossible, and so forth. Is this hurtful? Is this going to stymie the local domestic Saudi Arabian filmmaker?

HAMZAH: I mean, I don’t think so. We have to talk about the history and the politics to understand what cinema is and how it’s shaping the landscape in Saudi. We have to understand that Saudi Arabia and America have been inseparable since the inception of Saudi Arabia. So, the relationship there is strong and it will continue being strong. And why I bring this up is, when you look at cinema, the Saudi audience members were consuming a lot of American Hollywood films from the get-go.

That elevated the taste of the Saudi filmmaker or the Saudi consumer. They were, early on, exposed to high production value products because in Saudi at the time…We’re stull an emerging market but if you go back to the 70s and even earlier, that industry wasn’t there at all. And as an Arab culture, we had other pillars of our culture that we were focusing on, like poetry, writing novels, lectures, and whatnot. So, film wasn’t given its full attention. It was basically a product that we imported from overseas.

So, it really elevated the standards in terms of taste for the local audiences. And that created kind of a barrier earlier on when there was a lot of attempts to create Saudi films. Because of just the lack of access to good cameras, crew members, and whatnot, the quality of these Saudi films that were attempted in the 70s, 80s, was not great. Because, as a consumer, you have the opportunity to watch an American film or a Saudi film that’s trying to have that slick polish that American products or English, Korean, you name it–-entertainment products were being imported. So, that kind of slowed down the emphasis on Saudi cinema.

Now, flash forward to 2018 and beyond, we have the formation of the Ministry of Culture. We have different programs supporting filmmakers. Now, we have access to money. We have access to equipment, crew members. And we finally feel like we can compete on the global stage. Yes, the Arab population in general potentially consumes more Western content because of that barrier in quality and because of the memory that we have growing up that Arab content usually doesn't look that great. That's the thing we are struggling with right now.

I think this stigma will change in the next three years. We just need a couple of killer films to set the bar so high for Saudi filmmakers to realize this is what we can create from within our country, and also teach the foreign audiences that this is what a Saudi film looks like. But right now, it is the wild, wild West in Saudi. It is completely wild. Everyone is making whatever they think they should be making. We have comedies. We have sci-fi films. We have historical dramas. We have people trying to do unique local accents in the films. Everybody's just trying what's going to stick. Some of it is sticking. Some of it is not. But you can't compete with the Mission: Impossibles of the world. Still, the audience member in Saudi potentially will prefer that because it's a formula we're used to.

ERIC: It's also a very young market. Is it more than half or just about half of the population still under 25?

HAMZAH: And it's a small population, too. We're not that big of a country. We can't really expect from an emerging market with a small population to be one of the biggest box office markets in the world.

ERIC: Well, if we step back, though, from the idea of box office. Because, if we look at it…And it just happened during the Cannes Film Festival. Iranian films still today, they continue to produce just unbelievable films. Egypt, Jordan. There are areas in the Arab world that make films that touch the world. They’re moving films.

It sounds like, when you were speaking to me about Saudi filmmakers trying everything to get this audience, what may or may not lack, and I guess it's a question, is authenticity. Usually, authenticity works, even if there is something off. But if it's an authentic story, it tends to connect not just with the local domestic market, but a wider world, certainly in the festival world.

Which goes back to something else I wanted to ask. There was a film, I think it was produced locally. It was claimed to be Saudi Arabian. Sattar. $10 million in box office plus. My question about that, though, is what defines a Saudi film? Because, I think in this one, you had a Saudi actor, but the director came from Egypt or Kuwait, I believe, right? There's a mix of countries that participated in creating this successful film. In your opinion, what makes, quote unquote, a Saudi film?

HAMZAH: I mean, it's a very good question. And I think even in the U.S., we struggle with that. Like when you're trying to apply your film to a bunch of festivals, the question is always hard to answer. Is this an American film? Is this an Arab film? Is this an Egyptian film? Depending on who you ask, there might be a requirement that the film. 70% of it has to be filmed in the country of origin, or that you have the writer, director, and producer, or one of them or all of them must be from that local country, or that you have the main character be of the country you're claiming this will be from.

For me, as a filmmaker, the way I look at it is, it needs to be made by a filmmaker from that country. Like, if we're going to claim that, this movie has to be led by a Saudi, some money has to be invested from that country for it to be a Saudi film. And it doesn't have to be filmed in the country. I've filmed Saudi films that looked like they were filmed in Saudi, but they were actually filmed elsewhere because of financial reasons. But the main character and the themes and topics have to be inspired by the local culture. To me, if I hit all these four, then I can proudly claim that this is a Saudi film.

So, when you're asking about Sattar, is it a Saudi film? It is a Saudi film. The producers of the film were all Saudi. The money was all Saudi. Yes, they did get a Kuwaiti director, and perhaps some of the writers that were involved, people who workshopped the script and fixed it, were not local Saudis. But it is an emerging market, and there's not a lot of experts. We're talking about directors, writers who are from Saudi. So in the early days of Saudi cinema, of course, they're going to seek the help of neighboring countries. Like, why not seek the help of Egyptians? Why not seek the help of Kuwaitis who have been doing theater and cinema way more, way before we started doing it?

So, that's how I look at it. And that question actually was asked to me by one of the consulting firms that's working with the Ministry of Culture, and that was my answer. So it depends on how you guys want to define it. But as a filmmaker, this is how I define it.

ERIC: Yeah, well, it's not us. It's really, you know, the Saudi industry. And I just tend to always go back to storytelling. I mean, at the end of the day, we look at Mission: Impossible was a series now it's this massive franchise. But, you know, certainly when it began, and I think even today, it carries authenticity. You know, as farfetched as it is, as commercial as it is, there's something that remains authentic to its theme. And I think when eventually it deviates from being authentic, from its original, then probably that franchise will eventually be lost.

And Saudi Arabia–and in general, the Arab world–but Saudi Arabia has just has a history of storytelling. And so many phenomenal stories that have yet to be produced or brought forward that I'm aware of. It's kind of sad. And I don't want to compare it to any other country, but I will. China, for example, has just a wealth of stories, but they're not allowed to tell them. And if they are able to tell these stories, they're just phenomenal. And there are other countries that are that way. I hope that Saudi Arabia will start to look inwards more and tell their own stories.

HAMZAH: I think in Saudi, it's a little bit different. It's a little bit different than the Chinese stories or the Chinese industry in that, yes, the Arabs in general, and the Arabian Peninsula in specific, are masters of storytelling. We were called the Siad al-Khaliq. That's what we were referred to by the world, as masters of language and storytelling. We didn't really win the world with our sword. We actually won them with thought. And this is historically. With the way we told stories about our culture, stories about our faith, stories about our ancestors. And until this day, when you're with a Saudi, even their jokes are really well-crafted stories that have depth and metaphors and whatnot.

But we are fighting against misconception that's been in Hollywood for centuries. There's a really good book called Reel Bad Arab. And then it was made into a documentary. We have been the villains in Hollywood since the inception of cinema. The Arab sheikh was always presented as the villain with the big beard, and he has the harem. It's all colonialism portraying the Arabs in a very demeaning way. And as a Saudi who lives in 2025, I'm still witnessing that. And most of my interactions with non-Saudis and filmmakers, you're looked down upon as like, oh, you're just Arabs trying to do this, and you accidentally found money, and oil was accidentally found, as if all of our history was accidental.

And you brought up the topic of authenticity. It's hard. Not only do we need to be authentic, we also need to literally fight against this misconception that's been in people's minds across the world. So when I made the movie Arabia, I remember we took the movie and opened it in every city in the U.S. that had a museum. It played in IMAX. That was literally the first time anyone talked to, met, or heard the Saudi story. Met a Saudi, listened to someone from Saudi. And it was always like, oh, so your women drive? It's all these very punchy topics that somehow spread around the world about the Saudi culture.

So not only do you need to be authentic, but also you need to understand how to talk to the Western audiences too. But not just Western; the global audiences. To correct that misinformation or that concept. So, in Saudi, the Saudi government is very much pro-Saudis being very authentic. There are programs like BO, there are programs like CDF, which is the Cultural Development Fund, the Red Sea International Film Festival. They're all trying to support authentic Saudi filmmakers. But the question is outside of being played in Saudi, who's going to take them? If they're too authentic and they kind of go against what you have conceived of that country, it doesn't feel good. You're fighting against a system that's very hard to penetrate.

ERIC: Well, I think those are the things that make good cinema. But I agree with you. I have a dear friend, actually he was from Jordan, he was a stockbroker, real handsome guy, became an actor, gave up being a stockbroker in New York City and suddenly became this very successful actor here in the United States. And then suddenly realized that he's being cast always for these roles of being a terrorist and stopped, said, ‘I'm not going to do that anymore. I am not going to play that role anymore.’ And so I get that.

On the other hand, I have to be fair, I mean, Matt lives in Ireland and he’s Italian. I mean, his family, ancestors, probably were the brunt of every bad thing in the world. I mean, an Irish, Italian landed in the United States was on the bottom of the totem pole. And they were mocked, treated horribly. Italians, always gangsters, always bad people. It's the way the world rolls. And I think that eventually you have to get through that and start to show through cinema, through books, exactly what is happening now in Saudi Arabia. You mentioned Reel Bad Arabs, and I think you have to work through it.

HAMZAH: I think this is the reality. And also, as you're saying, they got to work through it, but also we're at a phase of experimentation right now. Like, we cannot put the pressure on the Saudi cinema and the industry to figure out itself in the next two years. Like, that's an impossible task. It's still an emerging market. Yes, Saudi, as a brand, is a hot topic around the world because of Trump visiting and all these relationships and oil and export and money and the World Cup. And like, of course, Saudi as a brand is strong. But the reality is, when we talk about the film industry, it's still an infant, still a baby. And I think everyone is putting a lot of pressure on it to like, where's the successful Saudi film? It's still a baby.

ERIC: It's sort of the comparison when you have a newborn and you say, my God, this seven-month-old baby is a genius. Look how beautifully it's a genius. He can do that. And then you have guests over and you go, it's a baby. I'm sorry, it's drooling. You know, it poos and it's, this is a baby.

In other words, Saudi filmmakers are being, you know…the amount of financing. If you go to the Cannes Film Festival, for example, or any of the film festivals, you literally see in these booths or plazas, the number of filmmakers and government officials that are there promoting what can happen in Saudi Arabia. I think the announcements, as you and I have discussed, of film funds that are over a billion dollars that really never emerge or they do emerge. And there's, I think, a lot of hype that muddles the reality.

ERIC: And I do believe that there are filmmakers such as yourself. And I want to give you the opportunity. And I want to talk about what you're doing today, because I also want to make it clear to our listeners: Hamzah's a friend. He's not a government official. He doesn't represent Saudi Arabia formally or officially, although they love to use him because he's a handsome guy and a smart dude. And he can communicate well with studios and on podcasts like that. He gets the message across. But you're a filmmaker.

Where are you on this latest film? Because the last time I think I was tracking you down, you were in Turkey somewhere. And then you were on in a desert somewhere else.

HAMZAH: Yes, so I'm a filmmaker. I'm very proud of being Saudi. I'm proud of my upbringing, heritage, faith, culture, everything. I've dedicated my life and my career toward creating content that will clear misconception about my people. That's kind of what I do. And I try and use the film language in a very slick and approachable way to do that. I don't like doing arthouse films. I don't like doing just simple documentaries, although I've done documentaries and they've done really well. But nowadays I'm more obsessed with creating worlds and telling stories that are deep and profound for the global audiences to consume. And then throwing a hint of a correction of what the Arab world is or what the Saudi culture is.

ERIC: If I remember correctly, the film that you're making now really touches on a subject. Well, people don't even speak about it, but I think it's one–besides artificial intelligence–this is a thousand times more important and it has to do with water. Is that correct?

HAMZAH: Yes. So every movie I try and make, it has to be answering a question that I am struggling with currently as a human being. The film I'm making right now is called Running Dry. In a nutshell, it's a movie that exposes we're running dry out of our ethics, our money, our culture. And the question I'm asking myself is, is there a way to balance between obsessed with the financials, being materialistic yet be cultured? So, can I be a capitalist and a cultured person at the same time? And the more I delved into this topic, the more I realized that anytime you introduce the metric of financial success, it kind of wipes out the culture that it gets introduced to.

Well, let me take a step backwards. Culture is usually preserved in the most remote villages and towns in any country. That's the birthplace of any true sustainable culture. When you are with an Arab in Saudi, in the middle of the desert, they never look down at their watch. They never look down at their phone. The sense of time is not there. The sense of like, I need to be done with you, I got to do something else, is not there. You're supposed to be their guest for three days and you just sit down and talk and connect on a personal level. Look up at the star, listen to poetry. This is where ideas are born and true connections are born.

The moment you introduce materialism to that society is the moment they wear Apple watches like I am doing. And this is the question I'm asking myself, I'm struggling with, is you start measuring your life with time and money. It's like, how many minutes do I have with you and how much money can I make out of you? And that's when you lose the uniqueness of that culture. So in a sense, because we, all of the different cultures around the world, adopted this materialistic approach to living, we're kind of becoming homogenous. We're kind of becoming all similar. Like an American is not so different than a Saudi. A Saudi is not so different than an African in Egypt or in South Africa. Everybody is the same, they have a phone. They have some kind of cool headphones. We are the perfect consumers for this business machine that's created.

So this movie asks that question and it's told in an action thriller, not in a documentary. The element we're using as the metaphor for the story is water. Water was given to us as humans for free. We are the ones who bottled it and sold it for money. We are the ones who created factories to put water in plastic jugs and sell it to people. It was free, just like exercise was free. Yet now we built these gyms so that you can subscribe to them and treadmill machines and all of this stuff, when you can just go and be like Eric, walk in the morning, swim in the ocean, do some pushups. It's there, it's all there. You don't need to spend money to be healthy, smart and intelligent.

So that's the movie. I don't wanna keep talking about it but that's the question that I ask and it's very relevant to Saudi Arabia because as we are propelled on the world stage, we're adopting a lot of emphasis on materialism, but we are trying to protect our culture. We have a ministry of culture. I don't know anybody else… and maybe some other countries have a Ministry of Culture but I don't think… I only know that Saudi has a Ministry of Culture. There is a huge emphasis on protecting our culture as we become financially more savvy and stable.

ERIC: When do you think this film will be released and what's your plans with it?

HAMZAH: We're aiming to finish it as soon as possible. Going back to the topic of an emerging market, we were very lucky to be the recipient of the most amount of grants and support from Saudi as a film. We have the support of the Ministry of Culture through two of their programs, CDF, which is the cultural development fund, which is project kind of green light. That's what it means. And the Red Sea International Film Festival gave us some money, and now we're working with AlUla, the city, to give us some more cash incentives to go and film there. We filmed 50% of the film in Turkey and now we're planning on finishing the remainder of the film in Saudi Arabia.

And why did we not film the whole movie in Saudi? It's because the story takes place between two countries–

ERIC: I'm sorry, are you gonna do a monologue? You're gonna ask your own questions?

HAMZAH: [Laughs] I can run this podcast on my own.

ERIC: I'm gonna go grab a cup of coffee. No, no, no.

HAMZAH: Yeah, the story requires us to go and film in another country, but also it allowed us to get enough time to plan our shoot in Saudi. It's still like an emerging market. It's still difficult getting–

ERIC: Will you use one of the studios in, what's the name of the large studio in Saudi Arabia? Yeah. Will you be shooting in–

HAMZAH: So I'm hoping… One of the sets requires a stage, but again, we just finished our grand tour of what different regions we have. Like Neom has a film office, AlUla has a film office, Jeddah, Riyadh. So we were invited and taken on these film tours with my producer. We've seen what AlUla offers. We've seen what Neom has to offer. We've seen what the city of Riyadh has to offer, what Jeddah has to offer. It's all very unique and interesting. And I think what we're gonna be doing is doubling down on what we have control over as I live in, I mean, I grew up in Saudi, so I have access to certain locations. And then we're gonna work with the local government to help us with certain bigger scenes, such as like scenes that we require blocking streets and whatnot.

HAMZAH: So things are moving. Things are finally happening in Saudi. And I'm not the only one who's doing this. There is a lot of other filmmakers who have done what I'm attempting to do successfully. There's another movie called, there's a movie called Hadjan. There's a movie called…you mentioned Sattar. They did really well. Isaaf, it's an ambulance comedy. Like they're all doing some really good work. And every film that gets made, the officials know how to deal with the film.

ERIC: Well, I think it’s so important for any developing film country to really support the domestic filmmakers. You mentioned it, we talked about it at the beginning of the show. If Hollywood gets involved, it really steamrolls an industry, good or bad. We have to look at film history. It’s simple to see it. And if we look at Europe, for example, France was one of, and probably still is, one of the greatest filmmaking countries in the world before the second world war. After it, the U.S. emerged and Hollywood emerged as this cultural icon.

And the two conversations that you presented to us today are, losing the culture, all of us becoming this sort of materialistic person. You know, Hollywood touches on those themes and it does it well. I mean, everybody kind of gets engrossed with these blockbusters but from a production point of view, if Saudi, which they have in the past, just like other countries, announce funds to produce films, Hollywood is there to line up to get the money. And they promise everything and they tend to get the lion’s share.

And what we really want to see in Saudi Arabia are more filmmakers like yourself that break barriers because you have to break barriers every single day, to take risks and to find your own place. And it sounds like your film, Running Dry, is going to be one of those films Hamzah. And I hope that it hits the world stage.

I end every show with a verdict. And I think my verdict is that it's not Saudi Arabia alone who has to change and grow, but I think audiences around the world have to mature and be more open-minded to films from Saudi Arabia, from the Middle East, because phenomenal stories are being told. And a lot of them we can see at film festivals, but I hope that commercial cinema around the world can begin to show some of these films. And my verdict actually is going to be a very personal one. I know you as a good friend, and I know how much effort you've put into making this film. So my verdict is, I hope Running Dry hits the big screens around the world and you start to change the people's perception of Saudi Arabia as your mission in life actually is. Thanks Hamza for joining us, really appreciate it.

HAMZAH: Thank you guys for having me.