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Saudi Arabia’s Film AlUla Continues to Attract More Int’l, Local Productions

Film AlUla provides a package of services that attract many filmmakers from around the world.
Film AlUla provides a package of services that attract many filmmakers from around the world.
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Saudi Arabia’s Film AlUla Continues to Attract More Int’l, Local Productions

Film AlUla provides a package of services that attract many filmmakers from around the world.
Film AlUla provides a package of services that attract many filmmakers from around the world.

Film AlUla, the film commission located in Saudi Arabia’s northwestern governorate of AlUla, is continuing to attract more international and local movie and television productions.

Film AlUla had tremendous success filming scenes of the American movie, “Cherry”, which was the first Hollywood movie by two world-class directors, Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame) to shoot scenes in Saudi Arabia and the debut accomplishment for Film Alula. The scenes for “Cherry” were shot in the capital, Riyadh, in cooperation with Saudi Aramco, as well as multiple locations in AlUla.

Since Saudi Arabia started issuing tourist visas around the world, it has been visited by movie and television production companies that are exploring shooting in AlUla and all throughout the country. With incredible untapped locations, it is a unique and historic location to film.

Recently, another Hollywood production signed a joint agreement with Film AlUla to shoot in the province that is to be directed, produced and starring some of the brightest Hollywood stars. In additional to the increase of international productions, Film AlUla continues to support and build local productions.

Amongst the many local projects to announce, it will support the filming of two Saudi films, namely “Bayn Al-Rimal” (Between the Sand) by Muhammad Al-Atawi and “Noura” by Tawfiq Al-Zaidi, which won Daw' (Light) Film Competition. Film AlUla, a department of the Royal Commission for AlUla, will finance the two films, and provide and coordinate all the filming requirements in AlUla.

The Film Commission was established within 11 cultural commissions in February 2020 and whose Board of Directors is chaired by the Minister of Culture. It is responsible for developing and supporting the film sector in the Kingdom and encouraging individuals, institutions and companies to produce and develop content, among other responsibilities.

To attract international filmmakers, the administration of Film AlUla counts on the governorate’s attraction sites that position it among the best filming locations in the world. This is to implement their vision of leading the creative industries in the Kingdom, establish AlUla as international filming and content destination, and create a film infrastructure in northwestern Saudi Arabia.

Film AlUla provides a package of services that attract many filmmakers from around the world. This includes an already established team of film experts in AlUla to help facilitate the production of international films and building a suitable ecosystem for filmmaking. It handles the issuing of film crew visas, securing ground and air transportation and accommodations between Riyadh and AlUla, granting permits, facilitating the import and export of camera equipment and other production equipment, the information and relationships to help crew productions, and so much more.

In addition to its heritage and cultural depth dating back to more than 200,000 years of human history and 7,000 years of successive civilizations, AlUla has a unique diversity of terrains extending over more than 22,500 km of charming valleys, in which sandstones coexist with black volcanic rocks and amazing rock formations created by wind and water over millions of years. The governorate’s villages, farms, and cities with their old and modern buildings and hotel infrastructures offer a variety of options for filmmakers.

Film AlUla works to support and stimulate local film productions, in partnership with government agencies, based on the Royal Commission’s endeavor to contribute to the realization of Saudi Vision 2030 and empower national talents in the film industry.

Through their strategic partnership, the Film Commission and Film AlUla administration seek to create and develop a sustainable film sector in northwestern Saudi Arabia by facilitating internal investment, attracting international and regional films, television shows and documentaries for filming in AlUla, as well as developing local and regional businesses to serve the film sector. This is in addition to employing and training local talents, creating job opportunities in the film sector, and establishing an industrial value chain throughout the area as part of the filmmaking ecosystem.

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Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘Saturday Night’ Is Thinly Sketched but Satisfying

This image released by Sony Pictures shows, from left, Kim Matula, as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn, as Laraine Newman, Gabriel LaBelle, as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, as Rosie Shuster, and Matt Wood, as John Belushi. (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures Entertainment via AP)
This image released by Sony Pictures shows, from left, Kim Matula, as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn, as Laraine Newman, Gabriel LaBelle, as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, as Rosie Shuster, and Matt Wood, as John Belushi. (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures Entertainment via AP)
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Movie Review: ‘Saturday Night’ Is Thinly Sketched but Satisfying

This image released by Sony Pictures shows, from left, Kim Matula, as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn, as Laraine Newman, Gabriel LaBelle, as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, as Rosie Shuster, and Matt Wood, as John Belushi. (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures Entertainment via AP)
This image released by Sony Pictures shows, from left, Kim Matula, as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn, as Laraine Newman, Gabriel LaBelle, as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, as Rosie Shuster, and Matt Wood, as John Belushi. (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures Entertainment via AP)

We are at the apex of “Saturday Night Live” appreciation. Now entering its 50th year, “SNL” has never been more unquestioned as a bedrock American institution. The many years of cowbells, Californians, mom jeans, Totino’s, unfrozen caveman lawyers and vans down by the river have more than established “SNL” as hallowed late-night ground and a comedy citadel.

So it’s maybe appropriate that Jason Reitman’s big-screen ode, “Saturday Night,” should arrive, amid all of the tributes, to remind of the show’s original revolutionary force. Reitman’s film is set in the 90 minutes leading up to showtime before the first episode aired Oct. 11, 1975.

The atmosphere is hectic. The mood is anxious. And through cigarette smoke and backstage swirl rushes Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), who’s trying to launch a new kind of show that even he can’t quite explain.

“Saturday Night,” which opens in theaters Friday and expands in the coming weeks, isn’t a realistic tick-tock of how Michaels did it. And, while it boasts a number of fine performances, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone hoping to see an illuminating portrait of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

No, Reitman’s movie is striving for a myth of “Saturday Night Live.” Michaels’ quest in the film — and though he never strays farther than around the corner from 30 Rock, it is a quest — is not just to marshal together a live show on this particular night, it’s to overcome a cigar-chomping old guard of network television. (Milton Berle is skulking about, even Johnny Carson phones in.) In their eyes, Michaels is, to paraphrase Ned Beatty in “Network,” meddling with the primal forces of nature.

In mythologizing this generational battle, “Saturday Night” is a blistering barn-burner. In most other ways (cue the Debbie Downer trombone), it’s less good. Reitman, who penned the script with Gil Kenan, is too wide-eyed about the glory days of “SNL” to bring much acute insight to what was happening 50 years ago. And his film may be too spread thin by a clown car’s worth of big personalities. But in the movie’s primary goal, capturing a spirit of revolution that once might have seized barricades but instead flocks to Studio 8H, “Saturday Night” at least deserves a Spartan cheer.

A clock ticking down to showtime runs as ominously as it might in “MacGruber” throughout “Saturday Night.” Nothing is close to ready for air. John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract. Twenty-eight gallons of fake blood are missing. And, most pressing of all, the network is poised to air a Carson rerun if things don’t take shape. An executive pleading for a script is told, “It’s not that kind of show.”

What kind is it? Michaels, himself, is uncertain. He’s gathered together a “circus of rejects,” most of them then unknown to the public. There is Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien). Also in the mix are Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who spends much of the movie complaining about the untoward things the cast has been doing to Big Bird, Andy Kaufman (Braun again), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and the night’s host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys).

Most of them pass too quickly to make too much of an impression, though a few are good in their moments — notably Smith, playing up Chase’s braggadocio, O’Brien and Morris. Garrett Morris, the cast’s lone Black member, is in a quandary over his role — because of his race and because he was a playwright before being cast. Though “SNL” was revolutionary, it hardly arrived a finished product. Morris here is a reminder of the show’s sometimes — and ongoing — not always easy relationship to diversity, in race and gender.

It also wasn’t always such a break from what came before. When Chase faces off with Berle in a contest over Chase’s fiancee, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber) — one of the movie’s few truly charged scenes — they seem more alike than either would like to admit.

It’s not a great sign for “Saturday Night” how much better the old guard is than the young cast. Along with Simmons’ Berle is Willem Dafoe’s NBC executive David Tebet. He provides the movie its most “Network”-flavored drama, seeing “a prophet” in Michaels and, despite wavering skepticism, urging him to be “an unbending force of seismic disturbance.” Also in the mix — and a reminder that the suits had newbies, too — is Dick Ebersol (a refreshingly genuine Cooper Hoffman), a believer in Michaels but only up to a point.

Ultimately, this is Michaels’ show, and he’s played winningly by LaBelle, the “Fabelmans” star, even if the characterization, like much of “Saturday Night,” is a little thin. Sometimes by his side, as he races to get the show ready is the writer and Michaels’ then-wife, Rosie Shuster (the excellent Rachel Sennott), who you want more of.

It seems to be an unfortunate truth that dramatizations of “Saturday Night Live” inevitably kill it of laughter. That’s true here just as it was in Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” The exception to that, of course, is Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” which was smart enough to abandon all the “SNL” mythology and focus on what’s funny.

This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing. The cleverest thing about Reitman’s film is that it ends, rousingly, just where “SNL” starts.