Under the leadership of the most rigorous clerics, cinemas were closed for 35 years in Saudi Arabia, before reopening in 2018. Morals are evolving slowly, but surely, in the country of Prince Mohammed ben Salman. But above all, the kingdom now sees the cinema industry as a formidable business opportunity. Like other petromonarchies, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia today finances production from all over the world. And even from Quebec.
Montreal director Meryam Joobeur was able to count on two funds from the Middle East — one Qatari, the other Saudi — to complete the financing of her first feature film, Where we come from, which will be presented at the end of the month in official competition at the Berlinale.
The Doha Film Institute, based in Qatar, had already contributed to the production of short films by Meryam Joobeur, including Brotherhood, which was nominated for an Oscar. In interview with The duty two weeks ago, the director of Tunisian origin confided that she had felt no pressure for her films to conform to the official discourse of the authoritarian regimes of the Persian Gulf. One of its producers in Quebec, Maria Gracia Turgeon, agrees.
“In the world we live in, we can have ethical unease for any country that finances a film. Where is the line? For us, what matters is to do business with institutions that respect the complete artistic freedom of creators, and that was the case in this case,” she maintains.
His company, Midi la nuit, is a minority partner in Where we come from, a Tunisia-France-Canada co-production. Qatar and Saudi Arabia each represent less than 3% of investment in the “global financial structure” on which the film is based. This is much less than the funds allocated to the project by Telefilm Canada and SODEC, the two main public institutions for Quebec cinema.
The support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar aims above all to allow Meryam Joobeur’s feature film to reach an Arab audience, to whom this film set in rural Tunisia is primarily aimed.
Strategic investments
Funders from the Persian Gulf mainly invest in productions that directly or indirectly concern the Arab-Muslim world, but not only. Image Nation — a fund based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — has been participating in the financing of blockbusters Hollywood, like Men in Black III or the second part of Ghost Rider.
Saudi Arabia, which became interested in cinema later than its Qatari and Emirati neighbors, subsidized the production of Jeanne du Barry by French director Maïwenn through her Red Sea International Film Festival, created in 2019.
In the world we live in, we can have ethical unease for any country that finances a film. Where is the line?
This biographical drama about the mistress of Louis XV has little to do with Arab culture, other than Maïwenn’s Algerian origins. What then is the interest for Saudi Arabia in financially helping this production? The controversy over the choice of Johnny Depp to play the lead role almost completely eclipsed this issue when the film opened the Cannes Film Festival last year.
“The interest of Gulf countries in financing foreign cinema is not so much to impose their values across the world. On the contrary, they seek, through cinema, to present themselves as modern states that respect artistic freedom,” says Nolwenn Mingant, professor of American history and culture at the University of Angers, in France.
A specialist in the American cinema industry, she was interested in 7e art in the Arabian Peninsula as part of his latest work, which focuses on Hollywood’s efforts to penetrate the Arab world. For Nolwenn Mingant, cinema is part of the strategy of the Gulf countries to diversify their economies with a view to the “post-oil” era. Just like sport, particularly soccer, another area in which they have increased investments in recent years.
“You should know that all these countries had no national cinema until around ten years ago, unlike other Arab countries, such as Morocco or Egypt. Participating in the production of foreign films is also a way for them to acquire knowledge that they did not have until then and which they will be able to use to produce their own films,” notes Nolwenn Mingant.
The professor refuses to blame filmmakers who have their films financed by institutions based in Gulf countries. “All directors struggle to obtain financing. It’s normal for them to seek funding where it can be found. » That being said, the involvement of countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar in productions supported by Western public institutions is not without raising certain ethical considerations, according to her.
Ethical dilemma
The petromonarchies appear as dunces internationally on human rights issues. Homosexuality is repressed there. The conditions of migrant workers are regularly denounced by international organizations. Torture is still practiced there; freedom of expression is non-existent there.
For producer Judith Beauregard, there is obvious unease at the idea of collaborating with these countries. But realpolitik sometimes trumps moral considerations.
The animated film Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, which she produced, was presented last year to her great surprise at the Red Sea International Film Festival, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This selection, unsolicited, will have allowed this film, about the ravages of the war in Syria, to be seen in the Middle East, where it had been shunned since its release by the various distributors because of the very delicate subject it addresses.
For the next film by Marya Zarif, one of the co-directors of Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, Judith Beauregard this time does not refrain from seeking financing from the Arabian Peninsula upstream. “When we made Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo, I didn’t know these funds existed. Honestly, now that I know it exists, I can’t rule out using it right away. However, you have to know what you are getting into,” says the producer.
Other Quebec producers could face the ethical dilemma that confronts her in a few years. “There are more and more directors from diverse backgrounds who will have access to these funds. So, yes, the question will surely come up again,” she points out.