JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Arab women directors claimed two of the biggest competitive prizes at the Red Sea Film Festival, with Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen winning the Yusr Jury Prize and Palestinian American director Cherien Dabis taking the Silver Yusr Feature Film award after the closing ceremony, Dec. 12. Their wins point to a wider shift as women-led stories increasingly define the festival’s regional conversation, Dec. 18, 2025.
Red Sea Film Festival Yusr Awards put Arab women directors front and center
Organizers said Ameen’s “Hijra” won the Yusr Jury Prize and the Film AlUla Best Saudi Film Award, while Dabis’ “All That’s Left of You” earned the Silver Yusr Feature Film award — a category that carries a $30,000 prize. The top Golden Yusr, worth $100,000, went to Akio Fujimoto’s “Lost Land,” according to the festival’s closing-night announcement.
Dabis’ film follows three generations of a Palestinian family from the 1948 Nakba through 2022, weaving political history into intimate family moments. She said her drive to direct grew from a lack of authentic Arab representation, and from the barriers women still face in the industry. “There is this image of women filmmakers as overly emotional or unable to command a set,” Dabis told the Associated Press.
Ameen’s “Hijra” is built as a pilgrimage road movie: a grandmother and her two granddaughters travel from Taif to Mecca for Hajj, then face an escalating search when one disappears in the desert. Ameen called the Red Sea Film Festival “a turning point” for Saudi cinema, adding, “Ten years ago, we couldn’t have dreamed of this.” A rundown of other winners — including acting awards, short-film prizes and Juliette Binoche’s documentary win — was also reported by Cineuropa.
Outside the competition, the Red Sea Film Festival has leaned into high-visibility programming around women behind the camera. The event’s ninth Women in Cinema Gala, staged with partners Kering and EDITION Hotels, highlighted five female directors competing this year and brought Kering’s Women In Motion initiative to the festival for the first time, according to BroadcastPro ME. Red Sea Film Foundation Chairwoman Jomana Al Rashid said, “Championing women in film is a key part of the Foundation’s ethos.”
A shift years in the making
The festival’s latest results fit a pattern that has strengthened over multiple editions. In 2024, Tunisia’s “Red Path” won the Golden Yusr for best feature film, the Red Sea Film Festival said in its closing-night awards statement. In 2022, Iraq’s “Hanging Gardens” took the top Golden Yusr, according to the festival’s Yusr Awards winners announcement for 2022.
That arc has unfolded alongside Saudi Arabia’s push to rebuild a domestic movie business after commercial cinemas reopened in 2018. An AP report on the kingdom’s theater expansion in 2024 described how new screens helped create a pipeline for local productions and festivals that can carry them beyond the region.
For Arab women directors, the message from this year’s Yusr results is direct: winning at the Red Sea Film Festival can translate into wider distribution, bigger budgets and more space for stories that have long struggled to reach screens.
