Rough Seas: A War-Torn Middle East Isn’t the Only Reason the Red Sea Film Festival Was Abruptly Canceled

Geopolitical turmoil is as good an excuse as any to call off a film festival.

But an explosive shake-up of another sort is happening on the Middle Eastern cinema circuit — and it’s not just due to President Trump’s threats of “annihilation” to Iran.

Last week’s cancellation of Saudi Arabia’s glitzy Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah spurred industry chatter. At the same time, the long-defunct Dubai Film Festival announced it would spring back to life in 2027 in an overlapping slot. Multiple sources say destabilization in the festival space points to the failure of an image-sanitization campaign involving Hollywood — one that’s costing Middle East investors too much and brought too few results.

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