Saudi officials shut down country's only film festival

Saudi Arabian officials have suddenly cancelled the country's only film festival, which was set to open on Saturday.

"Late last night, the governorate of Jeddah notified us of the festival's cancellation, after it received instructions from official parties. We were not told why," Mamdouh Salem, one of the organizers of the Jeddah Film Festival, told the Reuters news agency on Saturday.

It would have been the festival's fourth year.

Films are a hard sell in a country where cinemas have been banned for almost 30 years.

That ban was finally broken in December with the screening of the Saudi comedy Menahi in two cities in the Middle Eastern kingdom.

The movie, produced by Saudi royal Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, proved to be popular with screenings going eight times a day. In fact, Alwaleed donated profits from the screenings to the Jeddah festival in a show of support.

However, the comedy brought sharp reaction from some hard-line Muslim clerics as well as Ibrahim al-Ghaith, former head of the country's religious police, who proclaimed that cinema is evil.

Conservative clerics believe films from more liberal Arab countries could violate religious taboos.

The Jeddah Film Festival, scheduled to run July 18-22, was to feature 100 films from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.