Saudi Film Fest Reveals Dates & Team; TIFF Awards For Participant & Emerging Female Exec; Jerry Springer To Give Edinburgh Lecture — Global Briefs

Saudi Arabia’s first film festival, the Red Sea International Film Festival, is set to take place in the city of Jeddah between 12 – 21 March, 2020. With a focus on the ‘global south’, the festival’s program will also showcase Arab and international cinema across several sections. Festival director and CEO is Mahmoud Sabbagh. Hussain Currimbhoy, who previously served as a documentary programmer at Sundance joins the festival as artistic director, and former Dubai fest managing director Shivani Pandya Malhotra joins as managing director. Industry veteran Antoine Khalife joins as director of the Arab programme, Samaher Mously as director of marketing and communications and Ibrahim Modir as head of operations. The government-backed event has also launched The Red Sea Lodge: The New Arab Wave, a script and feature lab in collaboration with the TorinoFilmLab which will open for submissions on 1 July, 2019. It will give two $500,000 awards to the best projects from the lab. 

This year’s TIFF Tribute Gala, the annual awards fundraiser to support TIFF’s programs, will this year fete Roma, Green Book and Spotlight producer Participant Media with the inaugural TIFF Impact Award. The prize will be accepted by Participant founder and chairman Jeff Skoll and CEO David Linde. The gala will also include the new Mary Pickford Award, honoring a female emerging talent in the industry. The inaugural award will be given this year in celebration of United Artists’ 100th anniversary. The recipient of the award, as well as additional honorees for the TIFF Tribute Gala, will be announced in the coming weeks.

Former talk show host Jerry Springer will deliver the Edinburgh TV Festival ‘Alternative MacTaggart Lecture at the end of August. Springer will give a short speech ahead of a Q&A with head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, Dorothy Byrne. The Jerry Springer Show ran for 27 seasons from 1991 to 2018. UK-born Springer has described himself as a “political junkie” and began his career as a former political campaign adviser to Robert F Kennedy before becoming mayor
of Cincinnati.