IMDb’s portal database expanded with 519 project pages that list Saudi Arabia in the country of manufacture column. The compilation covers not only feature films but also television series, shows, and music videos. It includes examples like recording a football match between the national teams of the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay during the 1997 Confederations Cup held in a Riyadh stadium. There are also 112 Saudi films represented in the Russian Kinopoisk database.
Such modest production volumes are not surprising. Saudi cinemas were banned for 35 years, from 1983 until 2018.
Yet a recent Saudi Ministry of Culture report titled State of Culture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Facts and Figures notes that the absence of formal cinemas did not equate to a void in cinema culture. Home viewing spaces first emerged in the 1930s within residential complexes in Dhahran built for foreign employees of California-Arabian Standard Oil. The venture began as a joint effort between an American oil company and the Saudi government and, fifty years later, transferred full control to the national entity later known as Saudi Aramco.
By the early 1950s, informal cinema practices started taking shape in various towns. Screenings occurred in house courtyards and sports clubs, and in some Arabic references even in embassy and consulate buildings. These venues were improvised and non-systematic, clashing with traditional Arab norms and Islamic doctrine. Access, too, was typically restricted to men, and the films showcased were largely Egyptian, Indian, and Turkish productions.
Credit for the title of the first Saudi film goes to several works in parallel. One candidate is The Fly, a 1952 short about the flower fly and the diseases it can carry. This documentary aims to improve medical literacy and was produced by California-Arabian Standard Oil with American director Richard Layton guiding a Hollywood crew in the kingdom. Shortly before, Michelangelo earned an Oscar for a documentary about Titan and contributed to early Disney projects such as Dumbo, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. After a four-year stay in Saudi Arabia, the producer returned with a new documentary, The Island of Allah, examining the kingdom’s oil business. Although the credits bear predominantly American names, scholars often regard The Fly as a Saudi film because the principal character—a Saudi physician, Hassan al-Ghanim—remains central to the narrative.
A second contender for the debut title is Remorse, released around the time the state television network began broadcasting in 1965. This era marks the nascent stage of a formal Saudi film industry, with performers recruited from university theater programs and television emerging as the primary arena for “movie nights.”
The Ministry of Culture’s report also mentions another film recognized as a debut: Murder in the City, a 1976 short about Lebanon’s civil war and Beirut’s devastation. The document notes it as the first film officially shot in Saudi Arabia and shown at international festivals, citing a Cairo festival where the work won the Silver Nefertiti award. Its director-producer, Abdullah al-Muhaisen, studied philosophy and cinematography in London after graduating and returned to Saudi Arabia in 1975 with a director’s credential. Through the early 1990s, al-Muhaisen’s production company dominated Saudi cinema, and he was regarded as the kingdom’s sole director.
Three years after Murder in the City surfaced in 1979, a dramatic event unfolded at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, where terrorists seized thousands of pilgrims. The crisis ended with a forceful intervention two weeks later, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Official figures record 255 dead or injured and 560 injuries among pilgrims, security personnel, and attackers. The incident ignited Islamist sentiment and intensified calls blaming cinemas for corrupting societal values, contributing to a ban on cinema in 1983 that endured for decades.
Meanwhile, television thrived during the 1980s, becoming an era of booming private productions and a surge in serialized content. VCRs and videotapes also spread, turning Saudi Arabia into a major consumer of home entertainment during a cinema drought.
The 1990s brought notable milestones. The satirical show Tash ma Tash, a long-running program with eighteen seasons, broadcast on the state channel and earned recognition beyond Saudi borders, with portions preserved in the US Library of Congress. The series pioneered bold self-irony and tackled sensitive topics around religion and law, airing new episodes after sunset during Ramadan.
Satellite channels widened access to foreign films and series. Early controls limited ownership, but demand grew so sharply that the government relaxed restrictions, allowing satellite TV as long as programming avoided pornography or critiques of the country’s leadership and Islam. Public Internet access followed, and the Cinemac film forum emerged as a foundational industry hub, with many users later becoming critics, screenwriters, and directors in official media circles.
Film production remained dormant for a time but revived in the early 2000s, initially as amateur short films shot under challenging conditions and with questionable actors on screen, according to the Ministry of Culture’s report.
By 2006, a trio of notable releases stood out. The filmmaker Abdullah al-Muhaisen returned with the feature-length Shadows of Silence, a fantasy drama about a regime-run hypnotherapy center that masks an agenda to manipulate promising youth. Palestinian-Israeli filmmaker Isidore Mussalam released a big-budget comedy How Are You? (shot in the UAE), a story of a young Arab woman confronting a conservative family. It became the first Saudi film to see commercial release. Debates about the cinema ban resurfaced, amplified by Abdullah al-Eyaf’s short Cinema 500 km, which follows a young Saudi cinephile who travels across borders to experience cinema on the big screen for the first time.
In the early 2000s, a wave of liberalization began. The first IMAX theater opened in 2005 for educational screenings, and a dedicated screening hall emerged in the capital’s hotel complex, primarily serving women and children with foreign cartoons dubbed into Arabic. Creative minds also launched film festivals, though many venues did not align with traditional literary or cultural club settings, and some attempts persisted for years before folding.
Change accelerated in 2010 when Wajda, a film about a girl saving for a bicycle, became the kingdom’s first feature directed by a Saudi woman, Haifa al-Mansour. It marked a social breakthrough and Saudi Arabia’s bid for Oscar recognition, debuting at the Venice Film Festival. In 2015, the country established the Saudi Film Festival, an annual showcase that has grown with a new generation of filmmakers who leverage online platforms such as YouTube for independent cinema. Netflix arrived in 2016, expanding distribution with Arab-language productions, and the romantic drama Baraka Meets Baraka, directed by Mahmoud Sabbagh, found a global audience though Oscar nomination remained elusive.
Saudi cinema made a dramatic return in 2018 when the ban was lifted. The first publicly screened film after the change was the Marvel superhero film Black Panther, though some extended scenes were cut. Avengers: Infinity War followed soon after. The Saudi Ministry of Culture reports 101 films produced in 2019, including 20 feature-length titles, with authorities expecting more than 300 cinemas to operate in the kingdom by 2030. In 2020, Saudi Arabia surpassed the United Arab Emirates to become the Middle East’s most lucrative film market, continuing to expand even amid the global pandemic.
Further reading about the history of Iranian cinema is available in a separate section titled The History of Iranian Cinema.