Spike Lee to Head Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival Jury

The Jeddah festival's broader lineup now includes Thierry Frémaux's "Lumière: Le Cinema," the sequel to "Lumière: The Adventure Begins."

The Red Sea International Film Festival is now a Spike Lee joint.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker will preside over the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia film festival’s features-competition jury this year, Red Sea announced on Thursday via Instagram. Lee’s impressive filmography includes “Do the Right Thing” (1989), “Malcolm X” (1992), and “BlacKkKlansman” (2019), for which he won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. “BlacKkKlansman” was also nominated for Lee’s directing and for Best Picture.

The 2024 Red Sea Film Festival will take place in Jeddah’s Old Town of Al Balad from December 5-14.

Not in competition but newly announced to play at Red Sea 2024 is Thierry Frémaux’s “Lumière: Le Cinema,” the sequel to “Lumière: The Adventure Begins,” which debuted at the inaugural Red Sea festival. “Le Cinema” is a cinephile’s dream, described as “an unparalleled journey through the early days of celluloid,” it features 100 newly restored films. Frémaux is the director of the Lumière Institute in Lyon and the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival.

In addition to “Lumière: Le Cinema,” the International Spectacular section will include screenings of “Maria” by Pablo Larraín, “We Live in Time” by John Crowley, and even “Kraven the Hunter” by J.C. Chandor.

RSIFF 2024 will also feature the world premiere of Max Shiskin’s post-apocalyptic action film “The Last Ronin.” You can find the festival’s full lineup here.

Battling for Lee’s attention (and awards) will be “To Kill a Mongolion Horse” (Xiaoxuan Jiang), “To a Land Unknown” (Mahdi Fleifel), “Superboys of Malegaon” (Reema Kagti), “Songs of Adam” (Oday Rasheed), “Snow White: The Untold Story” (Taghrid Abouelhassan), “Sima’s Song” (Roya Sadat), “Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo” (Khaled Mansour), “Saify” (Wael Abu Mansour), “Saba” (Maksud Hossain), “Red Path” (Lotfi Achour), “My Friend An Delie” (Zijian Dong), “Moon” (Kurdwin Ayub), “Hanami” (Denise Fernandes), “Bin U Bin, Elsewhere the Border” (Mohamed Lakhdar Tati), “AÏCHA” (Mehdi M. Barsaoui), and “6 AM” (Mehran Modiri).

Lee is a grad of Morehouse College (1979) and the Numero Uno, NYU Graduate Film School (1982); he’s a tenured film professor and artistic director at the NYU film school. Lee recently received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Biden.