The Red Sea International Film Festival is now a Spike Lee joint.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker will preside over the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia movie pageant’s features-competition jury this yr, Red Sea introduced on Thursday through Instagram. Lee’s impressive filmography contains “Do the Right Thing” (1989), “Malcolm X” (1992), and “BlacKkKlansman” (2019), for which he received the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. “BlacKkKlansman” was additionally nominated for Lee’s directing and for Best Picture.
The 2024 Red Sea Film Festival will happen in Jeddah’s Old Town of Al Balad from December 5-14.
Not in competitors however newly introduced to play at Red Sea 2024 is Thierry Frémaux’s “Lumière: Le Cinema,” the sequel to “Lumière: The Adventure Begins,” which debuted on the inaugural Red Sea pageant. “Le Cinema” is a cinephile’s dream, described as “an unparalleled journey through the early days of celluloid,” it options 100 newly restored movies. Frémaux is the director of the Lumière Institute in Lyon and the overall delegate of the Cannes Film Festival.
In addition to “Lumière: Le Cinema,” the International Spectacular part will embrace screenings of “Maria” by Pablo Larraín, “We Live in Time” by John Crowley, and even “Kraven the Hunter” by J.C. Chandor.
RSIFF 2024 may also function the world premiere of Max Shiskin’s post-apocalyptic motion movie “The Last Ronin.” You can discover the pageant’s full lineup here.
Battling for Lee’s consideration (and awards) can be “To Kill a Mongolion Horse” (Xiaoxuan Jiang), “To a Land Unknown” (Mahdi Fleifel), “Superboys of Malegaon” (Reema Kagti), “Songs of Adam” (Oday Rasheed), “Snow White: The Untold Story” (Taghrid Abouelhassan), “Sima’s Song” (Roya Sadat), “Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo” (Khaled Mansour), “Saify” (Wael Abu Mansour), “Saba” (Maksud Hossain), “Red Path” (Lotfi Achour), “My Friend An Delie” (Zijian Dong), “Moon” (Kurdwin Ayub), “Hanami” (Denise Fernandes), “Bin U Bin, Elsewhere the Border” (Mohamed Lakhdar Tati), “AÏCHA” (Mehdi M. Barsaoui), and “6 AM” (Mehran Modiri).
Lee is a grad of Morehouse College (1979) and the Numero Uno, NYU Graduate Film School (1982); he’s a tenured film professor and creative director on the NYU movie college. Lee lately obtained the National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Biden.
