RESIFF x Deadline Hollywood

Bringing Jeddah Into the Studio

Creative Direction & Photography — Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2025

Client Red Sea International Film Festival x Deadline Hollywood

Role Creative Director & Photographer

Talent Actors, directors, producers and filmmakers from across international cinema, including Rita Ora, Queen Latifah, Ana de Armas and Kriti Sanon.

The Challenge

For my fourth year photographing talent for Deadline Hollywood at the Red Sea International Film Festival, I wanted to create an editorial that could only have been made in Jeddah. We were working from an indoor studio, with a constant schedule of actors, directors and producers coming through to be photographed. Taking each sitter out into the city wasn't possible. But I didn't want to create portraits that could have been photographed in a studio anywhere in the world.

The question became:

How could I bring Jeddah into the photographs without leaving the studio?

Natasha Lyonne

The Inspiration

The solution had actually begun a year earlier.

During the 2024 festival, I spent my breaks and the small windows of time between shoots walking through Al-Balad, Jeddah's historic old town, with my camera. Sometimes I would head out at 2pm, walking in temperatures of around 40°C, photographing the architecture that caught my attention. I became fascinated by the doors, windows and balconies. The traditional wooden windows in particular felt unmistakably Jeddah. I was interested in their beauty, craftsmanship and relationship with privacy and modesty — architectural details that reveal something about how the city has been lived in for generations.

I photograph them knowing exactly what I would eventually do with the images. A year later, they became the starting point for the entire creative direction.

The Creative Solution

I couldn't take the talent onto the streets of Jeddah, so I brought Jeddah to them.

My photographs of Al-Balad's doors and windows were printed at large scale onto a non-reflective material and stretched across constructed walls, transforming the studio into an interpretation of the streets I had photographed the previous year.

Alongside the photographic set, I created a second, physical environment inspired by the cafés and interiors of Jeddah's old town. Rugs, lamps, lanterns, oversized pots and furniture sourced from local artisans were brought together with Iranian rugs to create a tactile, lived-in space.

I didn't want to reproduce Al-Balad literally. I wanted to take elements that had stayed with me from walking through the city and reinterpret them through my own visual language.

The two sets gave us very different ways of placing each sitter within Jeddah: one graphic and architectural, the other warmer, layered and intimate.

The Visual Language

As Creative Director and Photographer, I developed the complete visual approach — from the concept and set design to lighting, composition, posing and the relationship between each sitter and the environment.

The lighting combined Profoto flash with two large continuous lights. Although the sets referenced the streets and interiors of Jeddah, I deliberately didn't try to make the portraits look as though they had actually been photographed outside. I wanted the studio to remain visible.

Contrast is an important part of my photographic language, so the lighting retained the depth, shadow and sculptural quality characteristic of my portraiture.

The result sits intentionally somewhere between two worlds: Jeddah and the photographic studio.

A Different View of Jeddah

The project also had a personal motivation.

When I first travelled to Saudi Arabia in 2022, I was scared. Almost everything I knew about the country had come through international media, and much of what I had encountered was negative. I worried about what I should wear, my hair, whether I could talk freely to people and what would happen if I needed help.

The Jeddah I experienced was very different from the place I had imagined. After returning year after year, it has become one of my favourite destinations. I have discovered a city full of history, extraordinary architecture and people who have always made me feel welcome. I wanted this work to communicate some of what I had discovered. Not to create a fantasy of Jeddah, but to encourage people to look at it again.

International Cinema Through Jeddah

Another reason I love photographing at the Red Sea International Film Festival is the extraordinary range of people who come through my studio.

Alongside internationally recognised talent such as Rita Ora, Queen Latifah and Ana de Armas, I have the opportunity to photograph actors and filmmakers from across the EMEA region and beyond, including major figures from Indian cinema such as Kriti Sanon.

The Impact

The portraits appeared across Deadline Hollywood's website and social channels, Red Sea International Film Festival platforms, print and wider press coverage, with many of the images subsequently shared by the talent themselves. But one of the responses that meant the most to me came from people in Saudi Arabia. They recognised the locations.

People recognised particular doors, windows and architectural details from Jeddah and responded to seeing familiar elements of their city placed at the centre of an international editorial. The physical set also became an experience in itself. Talent and visitors stopped to take photographs and selfies within it.

The response travelled through the festival to the point that the CEO came to the studio specifically to have his portrait taken after seeing and hearing about the set.

What began as a simple solution to a practical production problem became something much bigger. The project allowed me to combine portraiture, set design, architecture and my own experience of Jeddah to create an editorial in which the city wasn't simply the location of the commission.

Jeddah became one of the subjects.