DHAHRAN: The fourth edition of the Saudi Film Festival in Dhahran is treating audiences to a host of creative films on various socio-cultural issues.
As crowds gather to explore the country’s filmmaking talent, Arab News caught up with Ali Al-Kalthami, the director behind the film “Wasati.”
The movie was screened in Los Angeles in 2016 during the two-day Saudi Film Days event and addresses Saudi culture.
“The movie addresses some of the stereotypes people might have about Saudi Arabia and the people here,” Al-Kalthami told Arab News.
“Wasati” is based on real-life events that happened during the performance of a play in Riyadh 10 years ago. The play was called “Wasati bela Wastiah,” which roughly translates to “A Moderate Without a Middle-Ground,” and during one of its performances, a group of extremists attacked the theater.
That story made headlines and shook Saudi society and now, Al-Kalthami is recounting the events from a different perspective, using dark humor to get the message across to the audience.
When asked if he envisions widespread acceptance of the movie in Saudi Arabia, Al-Kalthami said: “This is an important story for film enthusiasts, for artists and for real people.”
Al-Kalthami is a director, producer, actor and co-founder of entertainment production and distribution companies C3Films and Telfaz11.
The Saudi Film Festival is screening a slew of movies dedicated to discussing pressing issues in the country. On the second day of the event, the following movies were screened at 4 p.m.: “Jaber” (drama, social), “Invasion” (fantasy), “Shells” (stop motion, social), “The Story of the Sword” (fantasy, thriller), “The Right Helmet” (drama, comedy), “Why do people listen to Shailaat?” (creative documentary, musical), “Humanization of the Cities” (documentary) and “Sadaqa Jariah” (drama, comedy).
During the second session, which ran at 6:30 p.m., the following movies were screened: “Tongue” (drama, thriller), “The Music Box Dancer” (psychodrama, social), “Tawq” (psychodrama) and “A matter of trust” (drama).
During the third session, which ran at 8:00 p.m., the screened movies included: “I Can’t Kiss Myself” (mystery, fantasy), “Refuge” (drama, thriller), “The Wedding Dress” (drama), “Zaina’s Cake” (drama, romance).
During the outdoor movies session, which ran at 9:00 p.m., Hungarian film “Sing” and Spanish film “I’ve Just had a Dream” were shown.
Saudi Film Festival highlights socio-cultural issues
Saudi Film Festival highlights socio-cultural issues
Three-year heatwave bleached half the planet’s coral reefs: study
PARIS: A study published on Tuesday showed that more than half of the world’s coral reefs were bleached between 2014-2017 — a record-setting episode now being eclipsed by another series of devastating heatwaves.
The analysis concluded that 51 percent of the world’s reefs endured moderate or worse bleaching while 15 percent experienced significant mortality over the three-year period known as the “Third Global Bleaching Event.”
It was “by far the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record,” said Sean Connolly, one the study’s authors and a senior scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
“And yet, reefs are currently experiencing an even more severe Fourth Event, which started in early 2023,” Connolly said in a statement.
When the sea overheats, corals eject the microscopic algae that provides their distinct color and food source.
Unless ocean temperatures return to more tolerable levels, bleached corals are unable to recover and eventually die of starvation.
“Our findings demonstrate that the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs are accelerating, with the near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems,” said the study in the journal Nature Communications.
An international team of scientists analyzed data from more than 15,000 in-water and aerial surveys of reefs around the world over the 2014-2017 period.
They combined the data with satellite-based heat stress measurements and used statistical models to estimate how much bleaching occurred around the world.
No time to recover
The two previous global bleaching events, in 1998 and 2010, had lasted one year.
“2014-17 was the first record of a global coral bleaching event lasting much beyond a single year,” the study said.
“Ocean warming is increasing the frequency, extent, and severity of tropical-coral bleaching and mortality.”
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, for instance, saw peak heat stress increase each year between 2014 and 2017.
“We are seeing that reefs don’t have time to recover properly before the next bleaching event occurs,” said Scott Heron, professor of physics at James Cook University in Australia.
A major scientific report last year warned that the world’s tropical coral reefs have likely reached a “tipping point” — a shift that could trigger massive and often permanent changes in the natural world.
The global scientific consensus is that most coral reefs would perish at warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels — the ambitious, long-term limit countries agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C on average between 2023-2025, the European Union’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, said last month.
“We are only just beginning to analyze bleaching and mortality observations from the current bleaching event,” Connolly told AFP.
“However the overall level of heat stress was extraordinarily high, especially in 2023-2024, comparable to or higher than what was observed in 2014-2017, at least in some regions,” he said.
He said the Pacific coastline of Panama experienced “dramatically worse heat stress than they had ever experienced before, and we observed considerable coral mortality.”
