By hosting the first edition of the Saudi Independent Cinema Salon, ESRA Paris did more than simply open its doors to a program dedicated to Saudi auteur cinema. For one day, the school became a space for the exchange of works, ideas, and perspectives, where screenings, visual arts, and interactions with the audience helped shape the contours of an emerging cultural dialogue.
By Sara Berretima
There are events that cannot be summed up by their program alone. They are defined by the conversations they spark, the connections they foster, and the new perspectives they open up. The first edition of the Saudi Independent Cinema Salon (SICS), held on July 9, 2026, at ESRA Paris, falls into this category.
As soon as visitors enter the school, they realize that this is not just a series of screenings. In the hallways, students run into filmmakers, teachers chat with producers, and conversations begin even before the lights in the theater go out. Film is no longer just projected—it’s circulating.
By hosting this first edition, ESRA naturally aligns this initiative with its educational mission. The school provides training in film-related professions, but it also serves as a space where films can be viewed, examined, and discussed. This interplay between learning, creation, and reflection gives the event a unique character: the works are not presented as finished products, but as a starting point for discussion.
The Saudi Independent Cinema Salon was born out of a desire to foster connections. Conceived by filmmaker and visual artist Gigi Hozimah, in collaboration with Benjamin Azoulay, vice president of ESRA, the project aims to raise the profile of Saudi independent cinema while creating an environment conducive to dialogue with European audiences. The choice of a deliberately intimate format is part of this ambition. Here, each screening is followed by a discussion; each encounter opens up new avenues for reflection.
The program showcases the diversity of styles found in contemporary Saudi independent cinema. In *The Moment Mozart Mourned Himself*, Aqeel Alkhamees explores the realms of memory and solitude through an experimental work in which the narrative is constructed in fragments. Mohsen Ahmed’s *Takes on People Smoking* transforms an everyday gesture into a visual experience, revealing cinema’s ability to bring out the extraordinary in the ordinary. In *Damaged Masculinity*, Majed Al Saihati examines contemporary representations of masculinity by playing on the tensions between drama and irony.
Finally, *And Then Comes Winter*, written and directed by Gigi Hozimah, closes out the program with an intimate story in which silences and glances speak as loudly as the dialogue.
Brought together in a single program, these works do not seek to present a single image of Saudi cinema. On the contrary, they showcase a diversity of approaches, forms, and sensibilities. What unites them is not a common theme, but a shared creative freedom.
However, the most important part may actually take place once the screenings are over.
When the lights come back on, the audience remains in the theater. The discussion begins. Questions focus as much on directorial choices as on production conditions, cinematic influences, or the social realities depicted in the films. Students, teachers, filmmakers, and industry professionals compare their interpretations—which may differ at times—but are always driven by a desire to understand what the films reveal beyond their narratives.
The presence of critic Alex Masson, a member of the selection committee for the San Sebastián International Film Festival, enriches these discussions. His contributions place the films in a broader context, connecting them to developments in contemporary auteur cinema and to the issues currently shaping international filmmaking. The conversations do not seek to reach a consensus; rather, they extend the films’ impact by opening up new avenues of interpretation.
This interplay between the works and the viewers’ perspectives is echoed in the exhibition *My Body Is My World*, presented alongside the screenings. Conceived by Gigi Hozimah in collaboration with artist Hanaa Hejazi, it invites visitors to move seamlessly from film to the visual arts. The themes of the body, memory, and identity appear there in different forms, as if the images on display were silently continuing the stories discovered on screen. The exhibition is not merely an extension of the film program; it plays a full part in the cohesion of the entire experience.
This continuity is undoubtedly one of the successes of this first edition. Nothing seems isolated: the screenings lead to discussions, the discussions to informal encounters, and the encounters to the exhibition. The Salon is structured less as a series of events and more as a journey in which each stage sheds light on the one before it.
From this perspective, ESRA’s role becomes clear. The school is not merely the venue for the Film Festival; it provides its intellectual framework. The exchanges that take place in the hallways, the impromptu conversations between students and filmmakers, and the questions that follow the screenings serve as a reminder that a film school is also a space where a critical eye is cultivated. Education is no longer confined to the classroom: it is nourished by encounters with works of art and with the people who create them.
The partnership developed with ESRA thus gives the project a scope that extends beyond the mere screening of films. Under the leadership of Benjamin Azoulay, this collaboration places the Festival within a framework where education, creativity, and international cooperation come together. By bringing together filmmakers, students, teachers, critics, and industry professionals in one place, the event fosters a dialogue that is fully in line with the school’s mission.
By the end of the day, it won’t just be four films that will have been presented to the Parisian audience. A new way of thinking about the circulation of works will have taken shape: a form of cinema that is discovered through screening, understood through discussion, and continues to exist in the conversations it sparks.
As the last visitors leave the ESRA premises, conversations continue right at the school’s entrance. People talk about writing, directing, memory, production, the films they’ve just discovered, and those yet to be shown. Perhaps this is where the true success of this first edition lies: in having created, for a single day, a space where the works don’t end with the closing credits, but continue to live on through the dialogue they spark.
