Rekha and Muzaffar Ali’s Indian Classic ‘Umrao Jaan’ Set for Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival Treasures Strand

Indian director Muzaffar Ali‘s freshly restored 1981 classic “Umrao Jaan” will be shown outside the country for the first time at Saudi Arabia’s upcoming Red Sea International Film Festival, which has unveiled the lineup of its Treasures strand dedicated to six classic international and Arab films.

“Umrao Jaan,” starring susperstar Rekha in her Indian National Film Award-winning performance as a courtesan-poetess in 19th-century Lucknow, has been restored by the National Film Development Corporation-National Film Archive of India under the National Film Heritage Mission.

Other titles in the Treasures section comprise Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 psychological thriller “Spellbound,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, which marks the Red Sea fest’s first film from Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation dedicated to global cinema preservation. Then there is Luc Besson’s 1988 cult diving epic “The Big Blue,” making its big-screen debut in Saudi Arabia. For the fest’s first-ever silent film spectacular,…