Shivani Pandya Malhotra has resigned as normal director of Saudi Arabia’s Crimson Sea Movie Pageant after enjoying an instrumental function in constructing the occasion from scratch and, over the course of 5 editions, rising it into one of many Arab world’s most necessary festivals and the MENA area’s premier movie market. [Middle East and North Africa] area.
The Crimson Sea Pageant and Market, held within the jap Crimson Sea metropolis of Jeddah, was established in 2019 and its first version will happen in 2020, two years after Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year-old ban on business cinemas.
For its second yr, the Crimson Sea pageant welcomed practically 40,000 movie followers and greater than 4,000 movie professionals for 10 days in December 2022 and included a jury led by Oliver Stone. For the 2023 version, subtitled “Your story, your pageant,” Pandya Malhotra and her staff have chosen Baz Luhrmann as jury president and a lineup of movies together with “4 Women” by Kaouther Ben Hania and star director Maïwenn’s interval drama “Jeanne du Barry,” starring Johnny Depp, considered one of 170 movies supported by the Crimson Sea Fund. Final yr, Sean Baker chaired the jury for a star-studded version of the Crimson Sea pageant that kicked off with Dakota Johnson, Uma Thurman, Ana de Armas, Queen Latifah, Vin Diesel and Michael Caine among the many stars on the pink carpet.
“After seven unbelievable years and 5 outstanding editions of the Crimson Sea Worldwide Movie Pageant, I depart with immense satisfaction in every little thing we have now constructed collectively,” Pandya Malhotra stated in an announcement.
“It has been a privilege to be a part of the Basis’s journey from the very starting and to witness its development right into a globally revered establishment,” she added. “I’m deeply grateful to our President Jomana Al Rashid, CEO Faisal Baltyour, our executives, companions, filmmakers, colleagues and the broader movie group whose ardour and dedication have helped form this success. Whereas I’m excited concerning the subsequent chapter, the Crimson Sea Movie Basis will at all times maintain a really particular place in my coronary heart,” continued Pandya Malhotra.
Final yr’s version of the Crimson Sea Pageant was additionally the primary organized beneath the management of Saudi movie trade pioneer Faisal Baltyuor who, in Might 2025, was appointed CEO of the Crimson Sea Basis which oversees the pageant in addition to the Crimson Sea Fund and its year-round Crimson Sea Labs.
It’s believed that Baltyuor’s imaginative and prescient for the continuation of the pageant was in battle with Pandya Malhotra’s method of functioning, sources stated.
Baltyour commented: “Shivani has performed an necessary function within the Basis’s journey, working alongside a proficient staff of Saudi and worldwide professionals to assist form its development. We thank her for her contributions and need her each success within the subsequent chapter of her profession.”
Pandya Malhotra, who has greater than 25 years of expertise within the leisure trade — and who, earlier than the Crimson Sea Pageant, headed the now-defunct Dubai Movie Pageant — lately ventured into movie manufacturing as government producer of the Yemeni-Scottish director’s Yemeni drama “The Station,” which premiered to optimistic opinions in Might at Cannes Critics’ Week.