Honors for Viola Davis and Egyptian star Mona Zaki (Perfect Strangers, Flight 404, Abserb: The Squadron, The Spider), Johnny Depp‘s new movie as a director and a biopic about Robbie Williams will be part of this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, organizers said on Monday. They also unveiled the competition lineup for the fest’s fourth edition.
Organizers said that the overall lineup features 49 world and international premieres, also highlighting that six female filmmakers will be featured in the competition lineup.
Among the 15 competition titles announced are Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon, which bowed at the Toronto Film Festival, and Kurdwin Ayub’s Moon, which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival where it won the special jury prize.
The RSIFF on Monday also added several galas to its lineup. The opening night gala screening will be Karim Shenawi’s The Tale of Daye’s Family. Johnny Depp’s Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness will receive an awards night gala screening in Jeddah, and the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man from director Michael Gracey will receive the closing night gala screening.
Among the big names traveling to Jeddah for the fest will be Viola Davis, organizers unveiled during a press conference on Monday.
Previously, the RSIFF picked 12 movies for its Festival Favorites selection of standouts from the fest circuit, including U.K. Oscar submission Santosh, an Indian police procedural about two women who form an unlikely alliance directed by Sandhya Suri, and Chinese auteur Guan Hu’s Black Dog, which won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes.
Check out the RSIFF 2024 competition lineup below.
Red Sea Film Festival Competition
Superboys of Malegaon (Reema Kagti)
Hanami (Denise Fernandes)
To a Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel)
Moon (Kurdwin Ayub)
Songs of Adam (Oday Rasheed)
Red Path (Lotfi Achour)
Snow White (Taghrid Abouelhassan)
Bin U Bin, Border Elsewhere (Mohamed Lakhdar Tati)
Saify (Wael Abumansour)
Aïcha (Mehdi M. Barsaoui)
Seeking Haven for Mr Rambo (Khaled Mansour)
Sima’s Song (Roya Sadat)
6 in the Morning (Mehran Modiri)
To Kill a Mongolian Horse (Xiaoxuan Jiang)
Saba (Maksud Hossain)
