DAMMAM — The Saudi Arabian Films Festival, in its 6th edition, is set to kick off virtually, in full, on the Internet and the YouTube channel on Sept. 1.

The event is organized by the Culture and Arts Association, in Dammam, in partnership with King Abdulaziz World Cultural Center (Ithraa) in Dhahran and is backed by the Film Commission of the Ministry of Culture.

The 6-day festival will begin its 23 cinematic programs through a platform to celebrate Saudi films and filmmakers, displaying as much as possible of films, before the largest section of the public.

The Saudi films endorsed to compete on the festival awards will be shown, divided into 10 groups, with every 2-group to be displayed per day and followed by a discussion panel with their directors.

It will include also 5 symposia on: Saudi Films' Future, Image's Shift in the Poetic Cinema, Towards a Saudi Cinema Industry, Cinema, in the Wake of COVID-19 and the Saudi Films in the Cinema Showrooms.

In addition, there will be a Festival Book Program, dedicated for dialogues with authors as well as translators of books issued by the festival and a Films' Café Program.

The Café Program will mainly administer dialogues with a group of Saudi filmmakers, to discuss subjects such as: Screenplay writing, actor and performance experiment, image composition in the film making, film mounting (montage) and sound engineering and experiences on shooting and producing long-time films. — SPA