164 Global News Post 2

Four years on: Saudi’s movie market is of humble local productions, massive sales and censorship  by: Dahlia Kholaif

Arab News. (2017). Saudis crave revival of night out at the movies. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3yz9KMdKIU.

Continuing my research on content control and governmental interference in Saudi Arabia, I selected an article about Saudi Arabia’s recent lift of the ban on movies and cinemas. Saudi Arabia allowed the viewing of films in 2018 however they just recently decided to open their own cinemas in Saudi Arabia, a luxury they weren’t able to participate in for decades. Many Saudi Arabian citizens were very excited to be able to view a movie in a movie theatre. The Saudi Arabian box office made $238 million dollars in 2021 despite the fact that movie theatres were enforcing COVID-19 restrictions at the time. However, the movies shown were still being monitored and controlled by the Saudi Arabian government. Saudi Arabia banned the viewing of West Side Story, Eternals, Doctor Strange, and more recently Buzz Lightyear due to LGBTQ+ content. This caused quite a debate in the online community. A Saudi Arabian Twitter user, Mubarak Al-Deifallh, tweeted, “if there is a good thing to be mentioned about the opening of movie theatres in Saudi, it is to send messages to the whole world about actions that go against human nature.” Other users were quite upset, saying that the movie theatres shouldn’t be open if all movies were not going to be accessible. Despite the fact that the action the Saudi Arabian government took can be seen as progressive it still demonstrates that media liberation is very much still out of reach.

The author of this article is Dahlia Kholaif who has been a journalist for 10 years. She focuses on reporting stories on the Middle East. She cited statistics from the Film Authority of the Saudi Ministry of Culture to elaborate on the success of cinemas in Saudi Arabia. She also included several tweets from Saudi Arabian Twitter users to explain the first-hand reactions to the banning of several films in Saudi Arabian cinemas. The website provided information on the author and her other stories focus on a lot of human rights issues in the Middle East, therefore it is a topic the author feels very passionate about.