‘Within Sand,’ First Saudi Arabian Film to Be Shot in Neom, Gets Trailer

Middle East and North Africa-focused distributor Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Saudi Arabia-based producer Al Sarid Films have launched the trailer for the Saudi Arabian epic Within Sand, the first Saudi film to be shot in Neom, the region of the country set to be home to a proposed $500 billion megacity.

The film is set to be released wide across Saudi cinemas on Nov. 9 via Front Row Arabia, the joint venture between Front Row Filmed Entertainment and leading Saudi exhibitor Muvi Cinemas, and later around the Middle East. At the start of 2023, Front Row Arabia scored a major hit with the Saudi family comedy Sattar, which became the biggest local film of all time.

Backed by the Saudi Film Commission, Neom and Riyadh-based production company AlSarid Films, Within Sand is written and directed by first-time filmmaker Moe Alatawi and produced by Reem Alatawi and Jana Dahlawi.

It features an all-Saudi cast led by Ra’ed Alshammari, Adwa Fahd, Muhand Alsaleh, Fatima Alsharif and Obaid Alwadaani, and follows a 23-year-old tobacco merchant who breaks away from his trading convoy to quickly get home to his village, where his wife is about to have their first child. Now traveling alone, he’s ambushed by thieves who leave him for dead. His journey becomes a quest to survive, with the added threat of a wolf dogging his footsteps. Tormented by his memories, he struggles to hold on to his sanity in this vast, lonely, but also inspiring wilderness.

To make the shoot as authentic as possible, the production used a real wolf on set. 

Within Sand marks another step for Neom as part of its drive to become a major film location and production hub. In 2021, Rupert Wyatt’s Desert Warrior, starring Antony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Sharlto Copley and Ben Kingsley, became the biggest Hollywood feature to shoot there, while Con Air director Simon West recently announced that he would film his next movie, swords-and-sandals epic Antara, there.

See the Within Sand trailer below.