Inside my Red Sea Film Festival diary in Saudi: A mad scramble for tickets, star gazing, and surreal encounters

Jeddah: There’s something strangely comforting about landing at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah. Before you even reach baggage claim, the festival makes itself known — a literal red carpet with the black Red Sea International Film Festival logo emblazoned across it at the immigration counter, as if to say, welcome to the madness. Then come the smiles: student volunteers — mostly film-school kids with wide eyes and big dreams — holding placards, pointing lost journalists and dazed industry folk toward the festival counter.

Within minutes, you’re reminded that this whole circus — the stars, the handlers, the velvet ropes — is held together by one fragile, stubborn thing: everyone’s irrational love for cinema. It’s almost adorable.

Film festivals always like to pretend they’re about glamour, but the truth is, the glamour is a side dish. The main course is people having intense, borderline evangelical conversations about films you’ve never heard of and may never see again — the stuff that will never touch a mainstream UAE cinema screen.

And honestly? That’s what I’ve missed. Ever since the star-studded Dubai International Film Festival and Abu Dhabi International Film Festival rolled back its red carpets, we have been craving a serious dose of cinema fix. So being in Jeddah this week for Red Sea Fest feels like a strange homecoming.

And the guest list? Unapologetically extra. Materialists star Dakota Fanning drifting by like it’s a normal Saturday and not a moment where your brain goes, “Oh, that’s Dakota Fanning… buying coffee.”

The absolutely gorgeous Ana de Armas radiating the kind of glow that makes you question your hydration levels. Bollywood icon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan doing what only she can do: walk ten steps and turn it into a cinematic moment. Adrien Brody, deeply brooding because he can. Michael Caine just existing — and that alone is an event.

So what's the magic behind these cinematic extravaganzas? In my eyes, film festivals do one miraculous thing: they make actors… human and sometimes even accessbile. Suddenly they’re talking about craft and failure and the films that shaped them. They let their shoulders drop. They laugh a little too loudly. The media training slips. And you’re reminded why you fell in love with interviewing in the first place.

Of course, for journalists like me, all this “magic” comes with the fine print: unadulterated chaos. Full-body, cardio-level chaos. You’re sprinting for “In Conversation” tickets like your life depends on it. You’re watching films half-asleep, half-running commentary in your head because you know you have 30 minutes before your next interview.

The red carpet pen? A charming and delectable war zone filled with well-dressed journalists and fierce camera men with gigantic equipment. On red carpets, size truly matters because the bigger your camera and lights, the more chances of stars gravitating towards you. If you were a fly on the wall, you will spot perfectly gowned women elbowing, shouting names, waving mics around — and somehow you’re supposed to look composed and land a bite.

And then there are the absurdly normal encounters that festivals specialise in. Like the time I ran into the dishy NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's director-mother Mira Nair over a mediocre breakfast during Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Of all places. Great filmmakers appear when you least expect them — usually when you have crumbs on your dress. Or when the late Indian actor Irrfan Khan joins you as you eat lunch frantically in between deadlines to discuss his love for poetry. None of these conversations can be scripted, but you realise that film festivals make these inaccessable stars often humane and real.

Nineteen years I’ve been doing this. Nineteen years of late nights, missed screenings, perfectly timed caffeine crashes. But every time I’m at a festival like this, I’m reminded of the same thing: underneath the madness, everyone here is pulled in by the same gravitational force — the sheer love of cinema. It's my third time covering the Red Sea International Film Festival and each time I am impressed by the volume of stars that flock to Jeddah for a weekend to discuss why they joined the movies!

Honestly? That’s the part that keeps me coming back. Everything else — the sparkle, the scramble, the noise — is just add-on flavour. The real heart is always the films.