Desert X in collaboration with the Royal Commission for AlUla have announced on Saturday the participating artists in the interactive exhibition, the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia which open on January 31st and will run until March 7.

Desert X began in 2017, in California’s Coachella Valley, as a way to blend between modern art and the desert community. This will be Desert’s X very first international collaboration and the event will take part of AlUla’s Winter at Tantora festival.

The event will bring together a plurality of voices and is co-curated by Saudi curators Raneem Farsi and Aya Alireza with Desert X Artistic Director Neville Wakefield.

Participating artists in the event will include Lita Albuquerque (US); Manal AlDowayan (Saudi Arabia); Zahrah AlGhamdi (Saudi Arabia); Nasser AlSalem (Saudi Arabia); Rashed AlShashai (Saudi Arabia); Gisela Colon (Canada); Sherin Guirguis (Egypt); Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim (UAE); Nadim Karam (Lebanon); eL Seed (France); Wael Shawky (Egypt); Muhannad Shono (Saudi Arabia); Superflex (Denmark) and Rayyane Tabet (Lebanon).

The event will play a role in bringing together three continents and will serve as a gateway between the East and West, and with that marking an exciting moment for the Kingdom.

The renowned Dakar Rally is currently underway and it’s bringing the world’s top professional racers to the desert of Saudi Arabia, not only that but the line-up for the Dakar Rally Final Party concert has also been revealed and it is epic!

Happening on January 17th, the closing party will take place in Qiddiya where the winners from each category of the Rally will be crowned on the final podium of the event.

The event is bringing to the stage the international stars DJ Snake, Wiz Khalifa and Young Thug.

General admission tickets for the closing concert start from SAR150 ($40) while VIP packages are available for SAR1,250.

The Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia kicked off on the 5th and will last till January 17th, featuring more than 500 pilots from 62 countries who started their 7,800 kilometer journey in Jeddah and will finish in the new city of Qiddiya.

Organizers of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) are giving the chance to five Saudi female directors to work on a unique new movie project entitled ‘Untitled Omnibus Feature.’

The movie which is produced and funded by the RSIFF is expected to be the breakthrough for the aspiring directors Hind Alfahhad, Jowaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Sara Mesfer, and Fatima Al-Banawi, proving once again that the film festival is working as a platform to support young Saudi filmmakers.

The project is a huge platform for Saudi women in the movie industry and will debut at the inaugural festival in March 2020. To make things even more interesting, award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Suha Arraf is screenwriting supervisor on the portmanteau film.

The five uprising directors Hind Alfahhad, Jowaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Sara Mesfer and Fatima Al-Banawi will work individually on creating short films which will then be combined into an omnibus documentary feature.

“This project provides powerful first-person accounts of contemporary life in Saudi, from Saudi women, at a time of fascinating change,” festival director Mahmoud Sabbagh said.

“We believe in film’s capacity to advance diversity and integration. Supporting innovative new works is central to this mission. There is no better way to work toward this than by creating opportunities for Saudi filmmakers to tell their own stories.” He added.