Johnny Depp, Will Smith and a dozen or more female stars didn’t mind getting a free trip to Saudi Arabia in the last week.
They were flown in for the third annual Red Sea Film Festival, held in Jeddah and approved by the Saudi royal family. That includes MBS aka Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The murder in 2018 of US journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been forgotten apparently. (It’s so five years ago!)
Vanity Fair sponsored a lavish Women in Cinema gala, too, despite Saudi Arabia still not granting women most human rights (except for driving). There’s also the matter of same sex relationships and marriage being officially outlawed. The magazine’s owner, Conde Nast, has just been hit with National Labor Relations Board complaint by the News Guild concerning surveillance of employees prior to a mass lay off last week.
Smith, who is persona non grata in Hollywood after his 2022 Oscars slap, posted jolly videos from the Red Sea Film Festival. He even conducted a master class. Other stars who put aside damning international headlines about human rights in Saudi Arabia included Frieda Pinto, Joel Kinnaman, Sharon Stone, Diane Kruger, Paz Vega, Maiwenn, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Williams, Lucas Bravo, Alessandra Ambrosio, Ed Westwick, Amy Jackson, Rita Ora, as well as jury president Baz Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin.
Since the gruesome 2018 murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Turkey, Saudi Arabia has spent millions — mostly through international firm Publicis — to convince the world they are now a free and happy place. But watchdogs like Amnesty International and The New York Times would disagree. According to Amnesty, a Personal Standards Law passed in 2022, “codifies many of the informal yet widespread problematic practices inherent in the male guardianship system and entrenches a system of gender-based discrimination in most aspects of family life, including in marriage, divorce, and child custody.”
You may recall my encounter with the Red Sea folks at opening night of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The Saudis, in addition to the PR campaign, are spending like crazy underwriting other film festivals as well.
