Despite its relatively short history, Saudi feature cinema, which began in 2006 with Abdullah Al-Muhaisen's film Shadows of Silence (ظلال الصمت), has boldly ventured into various cinematic genres, including road trip films that require a distinctive experimental vision that can offer an expressive visual language and a social or intellectual message that can capture the viewer’s attention.
In this context, Saudi cinema has produced several films that rely on the theme of going on a “journey” or a “road trip”, making full use of the desert landscape of the Kingdom and the cultural diversity of its inhabitants. Since a journey can be either external or internal, Saudi road films have varied from literal road films to metaphorical road films, and often, the two meanings have blended in a context of freedom of movement and a desire for rebellion that is typical of road films in general.
Among these films, Last Visit 2019 (آخر زيارة), Madinat Al Malahi 2020 (مدينة الملاهي), and Route 10 2022
(سكة طويلة) stand out.
Last Visit (آخر زيارة) is directed by Abdulmohsen Al-Dabaan and written by Fahd Al-Osta and Abdulmohsen Al-Dabaan. It stars Osama Al-Qass, Abdullah Al-Fahd and Fahd Al-Ghuriri.
Last Visit (آخر زيارة) is not a road film in the strict sense, as the actual road only appears at the beginning and end of the film. Nevertheless, the concept of the journey pervades it, especially if we take it metaphorically because it is ultimately a journey within or a journey of the consciousness of the film’s characters, particularly Nasser and his son Walid.
The story revolves around Nasser, a father in his forties, who takes his teenage son Walid in his car to attend a close friend’s wedding. Their trip takes a turn when the father gets a phone call from his older brother, Mansour, who informs him that their father’s illness - now in his final days - is gravely ill . In a village south of Riyadh, the father and son encounter people whose customs and traditions differ from those of Riyadh, provoking Walid’s anger and leading him to rebel.
The film unveils the strained relationship between the father and son, as silence dominates their communication throughout the journey, with dialogue that is scarce and mostly one-sided. The film’s central conflict stems from the clash between the father’s desire to conform to the family’s customs and traditions and the son’s desire to defy these teachings, which he regards as pertaining to the father only.
Al-Dabaan is adept at depicting the rural setting and the familial atmosphere, conveying a sense of authenticity and warmth, as shown by the cordiality and generosity of the family members. He also succeeds in portraying the state of indifference that Walid experiences in a world from which he feels alienated, expressing the huge gap in the relationship between him and his father and his world, which he rejects by constantly burying himself in his mobile phone, and choosing a kind of voluntary isolation that keeps him from engaging in customs he does not care for.
As Walid tries to explore the rural world around him as a puzzle that needs an explanation, he gets injured and nearly drowns because he does not know how to drive or swim– a fact that the father discovers at the end of the trip while they are driving back, when he asks his son if he can swim!
The film does not reveal the reasons for the severe alienation between the father and son, especially from the latter’s perspective, but it can be inferred through the journey that neglect in raising the new generation, and failing to prepare them to be self-reliant, may be the real reason for this rift.
Last Visit (آخر زيارة) ends with one of the most important features distinguishing classic road films: masculinity. There is no presence of the female element in the film, and it belongs to that category of road films that embark on their journey in pursuit of a goal rather than escaping from something. This is consistent with the issue of the new generation, which the film addresses— those who should seek to move forward, not flee from something that is chasing them!
In Madinat Al Malahi (مدينة الملاهي), director Wael Abu Mansour offers a different image of road films than the one presented by Al-Dabaan in Last Visit (آخر زيارة). There is a car and a road, but no complete, realistic journey. The car breaks down at the start of the film, and when Masoud (played by Nayef Al-Dhafiri) tries to fix it in one of the workshops along the road, it is taken away, and he can only retrieve it at the end of the film. The real journey is not so much a car ride on the road as it is a journey of the self into the world.
If Al-Dabaan presented his journey in a social mold laden with the issue of generational conflict, Abu Mansour presented his journey in a bizarre, surreal form, laden with philosophical issues related to the relationship of the self to the other and the self to the world—despite the fact that the obsession with the search for identity is the common factor between the two directors.
The surreal dimension is clear from the first shot of the film, which shows a man and his wife in a car driving on a desert road. The couple sit in silence while we hear, in the background, the voice of Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud presenting one of the episodes of his famous program Science and Faith (العلم والإيمان).
The film does not clarify the purpose of the trip—whether it is a pursuit of a goal or an escape from something—but the brief conversation between the couple reveals that there is some family issue that they left behind. This may be reinforced by Mustafa Mahmoud’s talk about the Big Bang, black holes, and light years, all of which are scientific symbols that can be used to interpret the existential situation the two are experiencing.
The film alludes to the beginning of the universe as a reference to the start of the journey—the journey of Masoud and Salma (Nada Al-Mujaddi), or the journey of humanity in general in life—and uses light years as a figurative expression of the feeling of estrangement towards the other and towards the vast world that the desert represents, which surrounds the car and almost engulfs it. The car breakdown can also be seen as a pause for self-reflection and a reassessment of one’s existential position in the world. It is a pause that both sides need, each in their own way and apart from the other. Masoud, as a man, chose the path of confrontation and decided to pursue the search for the missing car, which symbolizes the lost self. Meanwhile, Salma, as a woman, chose the path of contemplation and waited alone inside a small tent on the sand.
In this sense, we are faced with two journeys: one undertaken by Masoud in the bizarre and wicked world of humans, and the other by Salma in the enchanting and terrifying world of nature. Through the two journeys, we understand that there are two views of the world: one partial and focused on the details—Masoud’s journey in the amusement park that has become a hub for illicit activities—and the other holistic, which is Salma’s journey, as she watches nature from a sandy hill while listening to the music and singing coming from a distant tent where a group of young people celebrate life.
This glaring contrast between the two views reveals to us the reason for the estrangement in the couple’s relationship, apparent at the beginning of the outward journey—an estrangement that the inward journey failed to resolve. The couple returned to their car to continue their shared journey on the same road, as the voice of Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud resonates in the background, speaking about the force of gravity that preserves the structure of the universe, while each looks at the road ahead in silence, not knowing where the journey will end!
Route 10 (سكة طويلة) is a film directed and written by Omar Naim, and, out of all the Saudi films, it is the one that contains all of the elements essential for a road film: a car, a straight and long road, two passengers, and a journey with a clear objective from start to finish. What sets Route 10 (سكة طويلة) apart is the complete duality in the meaning of the journey. Both the outward and inward journeys are intertwined and extended until the end of the film, each supporting and helping to explain the other.
The events revolve around Nasser (Baraa Alem) and his sister Maryam (Fatima Al-Banawi), who decide to travel along the desert road that stretches from Saudi Arabia to Abu Dhabi after their flight is suddenly canceled, in order to attend the wedding of their father (Abdulmohsen Al-Nimr), the famous businessman.
On the way, they are attacked by a mysterious man who pursues them in his Jeep throughout the journey and nearly kills them.
The film is a thriller, and Omar Naim succeeds in maintaining a suspenseful pace from the start of the journey to the end. He does not reveal the truth of the mysterious threat that endangers the siblings’ lives, leaving ample room for questions about the motives that could drive some to consider killing them.
Naim is keen to portray the journey in both its physical and psychological aspects. The physical aspect appears in the depiction of the road—sometimes from a bird’s eye view, sometimes from the perspective of the car passengers, and sometimes from the perspective of the masked man chasing them from behind. The features of the road are also conveyed through the desert stretching on both sides, as well as the gas station, the mosque, and the supermarket along the way, in addition to the characters the two encounter in the mosque, on the road, and in the desert.
The psychological journey emerges through the impact of the terrifying chase and the near-death experience on the siblings. Through the dialogue, we discover the reality of the strained relationship between them, which reveals the selfish side of Nasser’s personality—similar to his father’s. They also share a strained relationship with their father, who is concerned only with himself and his status as a renowned businessman, and whose mistreatment of others has made them targets for revenge by unknown individuals.
The journey served as a purification for Nasser and Maryam, who decided at the end of the journey to attend their father’s wedding in the clothes they had worn during the trip—stained with blood and dirt—instead of the formal attire their father insisted on. This was a form of rebellion against the paternal authority that had always imposed itself upon them. For the first time, Nasser also had the courage to tell his father, in front of the guests, that he had resigned—signifying his liberation from the father’s artificial personality and the recovery of his true self.
Finally, we can say that Saudi cinema has used road films as a means to address many social and cultural issues, ones that were confined to the problem of the relationship between parents and children or between men and women. To achieve this, it has presented its ideas through the interplay of genres, blending the road-film form with social, surreal, and thriller elements—while entirely avoiding political films!