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Red Sea Film Festival Reveals Panel of Judges for Lodge Residency

The Red Sea International Film Festival unveiled the panel of judges that will preside over the 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge Residency. (Official website)
The Red Sea International Film Festival unveiled the panel of judges that will preside over the 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge Residency. (Official website)
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Red Sea Film Festival Reveals Panel of Judges for Lodge Residency

The Red Sea International Film Festival unveiled the panel of judges that will preside over the 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge Residency. (Official website)
The Red Sea International Film Festival unveiled the panel of judges that will preside over the 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge Residency. (Official website)

The Red Sea International Film Festival unveiled the panel of judges that will preside over the 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge Residency.

The panel includes Russian film producer Nadia Turincev, writer and producer Meinolf Zurhorst and the award-winning Egyptian film director Yousry Nasrallah.

The jury will announce the winners of two $500,000 production prizes at an online ceremony on September 25. Six of the participant film projects are from Saudi Arabia, while the remaining are from the Arab world.

The third workshop aims to train participants on how to propose and present their projects, in preparation for the digital meetings of November’s TorinoFilmLab. The event is a year-round, international laboratory that supports talents from all over the world, through training, development, production and distribution funding initiatives, including ScriptLab, FeatureLab and SeriesLab and the Red Sea Lodge.

While the TurinFilmLab, in collaboration with the Red Sea Film Lodge, selected 12 cinematic projects, each project’s team, from the director to the producer, and cinematographer, collaborated with a cinematic expert to develop their work and refine their skills as per the requirements of each stage of the creative process. This comprehensive program was designed to accommodate projects during whatever stage of development they had reached.

TorinoFilmLab Executive Director Savina Neirotti said: “The collaboration with the Red Sea Film Lodge has exceeded all expectations, even with the interruption caused by the unforeseeable global pandemic. The 12 projects have developed and evolved into fantastic projects and we are sure a large number of them will end up as films, whether they are awarded the production grant or not”.

Every stage of filmmaking is explored, from script consultations to work with experts in the fields of directing, cinematography and sound, through to post-production as well as a commercial focus on financing, sales, and audience engagement. Structured around diverse, stimulating exchanges with colleagues and mentors, the program is designed to enrich projects through multiple approaches and perspectives.

The final phase of the Lodge and the awarding of the grants was due to take place at the Red Sea International Film Festival in March, which was unable to take place due to coronavirus and the declaration of a global pandemic.

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Star Wars Series ‘Andor’ Back for Final Season

Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
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Star Wars Series ‘Andor’ Back for Final Season

Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)
Mexican actor Diego Luna attends the launch event for the second season of Lucasfilm's "Andor" at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, California, on April 14, 2025. (AFP)

If "Andor" -- which returns from Tuesday for its second and final season -- has been received as one of the very best "Star Wars" TV series, that is largely thanks to the grittier, more adult approach taken by its creator Tony Gilroy.

That standpoint -- far, far away from the family-pleasing tone often encountered in the "Star Wars" universe run by the Disney empire -- should be of no surprise to those who watched the 2002 action thriller "The Bourne Identity", written by Gilroy.

Its genesis was already evident in the 2016 "Star Wars" movie "Rogue One", which Gilroy co-wrote -- and which serves as the climax to "Andor", which recounts the rebellion leading up to that film's events.

"Everything is emotionally charged" because "we're getting close to 'Rogue One'," Diego Luna, the actor who plays the protagonist Cassian Andor, told AFP.

For Disney, the success of "Andor" stands out as a new hope for a franchise that has become hit-or-miss with audiences in recent years.

That is why it has banked heavily on the 12-episode story, which cost a staggering $645 million to make, according to Forbes magazine.

Where "Rogue One" was about a rebel suicide mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, with "characters that sacrifice everything for a cause", "Andor" is about how one of those characters "gets there", Luna said.

Unlike in a typical hero's journey, the series explores the motives and dark sides of both camps: the rebels and the Empire. It spends time with figures such as a rebel alliance operative played by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard.

Gilroy, speaking to AFP with Luna during a Paris visit, said the original plan was for five seasons of "Andor", but he came to realize "there's no physical way to do it" given "the volume of work" required.

The result was two seasons, but with episodes that were "more intense, more complex in every possible way", Luna said.

With season one finishing in late 2022 with a stunning 96-percent rating on the critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, season two has star billing on the Disney+ streaming platform.

That season hits the small screen from Tuesday in the United States, or from Wednesday in France, Germany, Italy and other territories.

- Revolutionary reading -

"Andor" is not the only hit "Star Wars" television series.

"The Mandalorian", which preceded it, excited audiences for the first two seasons before interest waned in its third. That story will move to the cinemas, with a film scheduled for release next year.

But "Andor" has impressed fans and critics with its darker vibe, greater political themes and more realistic tone.

Gilroy said his approach to the series was informed by a decades-long reading obsession about uprisings -- "all this crazy stuff I've learnt about... the Russian Revolution and... the French Revolution, and Thomas Paine and Oliver Cromwell and the Haitian Revolution and the Roman Revolution and Zapata."

"I mean, it's all in there," he said.

The second season focuses on the use of propaganda, looking at the tragic destiny of a planet called Ghorman, for which Gilroy and his team embarked on serious world-building, imagining its economy, language, culture and dress.

Part of the inspiration came from a French TV series about a village living under German occupation in World War II, "A French Village".

"I loved that show... I had some of those actors in my head" while writing about Ghorman's inhabitants, he said.

Even if some people might see some echoes of today's Earth in aspects of "Andor", Gilroy said a writer's horizon, stretching years ahead, did not allow him to anticipate current events.

But, he said, "the sad truth is that history is... rinse and repeat," adding: "We so commonly feel, narcissistically, that we live in unique times."

Technology might change, the rhetoric might alter, "but the dynamic of oppression and resistance are a Catherine wheel. It just keeps going. I think it's timeless, sadly."