Hobal

Abdulaziz Alshlahei's 2025 Saudi film follows a family living in the desert in the early nineties. Their grandfather has forbidden any contact with the city; the family lives by his rules and is entirely cut off from the outside world. The breaking point is an illness. Treatment would mean going to the city, and the grandfather will not allow it; the narrative enlarges the tension between belief and survival and shows the order of obedience inside the family. The desert photography takes wide space and the setting consists almost entirely of tents. The film belongs to the growth of Saudi production in recent years and takes the closed community as a direct subject. Who it's for: those who follow Gulf cinema and narratives of closed communities. Who it's not for: viewers for whom the death of a child and neglect would sit heavily.