Gulf cinema used to be treated like a polite plus-one at the global film table: nice to have, rarely the main character. That is changing rather quickly. Between Saudi Arabia’s fast-growing industry and the UAE’s more established production scene, the region now has festivals, funding, streaming deals, theatrical releases and, most importantly, directors with actual points of view.

The ones to follow aren't all doing the same thing, which is good news for everyone who likes cinema and bad news for lazy “emerging region” headlines. Some are working with feminist allegory, some with horror and thrillers, some with documentary memory, some with stories about cities, silence, class and control. Watch the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, the Saudi Film Festival in Dhahran, Sharjah Film Platform, the Emirates Film Festival and the Gulf Cinema Festival — this is where many of the region’s sharpest new stories are getting their first proper close-up.

Haifaa al-Mansour is usually the first name that comes up in any conversation about Saudi cinema, and for once the obvious answer is also the correct one. Widely recognised as Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, she helped open the door for the country’s cinema scene before there was much of a door to open.

Her international breakthrough was Wadjda, the story of a young girl determined to buy a bicycle in a society that would rather she did something less inconvenient. The film became a landmark: the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, a Venice success and a global introduction to Saudi storytelling that didn't arrive wrapped in clichés.

Since then, Al-Mansour has worked between Saudi and international projects, including Mary Shelley, Nappily Ever After, The Perfect Candidate and the mystery thriller Unidentified. Her films often return to women trying to move through systems designed to keep them still. Sometimes the act of rebellion is a campaign. Sometimes it is an investigation. Sometimes it is simply wanting a bike, which, as it turns out, can be very political when everyone else insists it isn't.

One to watch: Wadjda — still essential, still gentle, still doing more with a bicycle than many films do with an entire revolution.

Shahad Ameen makes films that feel as though they have washed ashore from a myth, then immediately started asking difficult questions. Born and raised in Jeddah and trained in London, she built her voice through shorts before making her feature debut with Scales, also known in Arabic as Sayidat Al Bahr.

The film premiered at Venice Critics’ Week and announced Ameen as one of the most visually distinctive Saudi directors working today. Shot in black and white and set in a dystopian fishing village, Scales uses folklore, sacrifice and sea-soaked symbolism to talk about women, power and the cost of obedience. So, yes, quite a lot for a film that is technically about mermaids.

Her more recent feature Hijra has only made her more central to the conversation. Following three women on a pilgrimage to Mecca, the film won prizes at the Red Sea International Film Festival and was selected as Saudi Arabia’s Academy Award submission. Ameen’s work isn't interested in explaining Saudi womanhood neatly for anyone’s comfort. It is stranger, sharper and much more interesting than that.

One to watch: Scales — eerie, elegant and proof that feminist allegory can come with excellent shadows.

Tawfik Alzaidi is part of the generation that started making Saudi films before Saudi cinema had the infrastructure to make that sound like a sensible career choice. His rise looks sudden from the outside, but it is really the result of years spent building a film language in a country where public cinema had only recently returned.

His breakthrough feature Norah became the first Saudi film selected for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, where it received a Special Mention. Set in a remote Saudi village in the 1990s, the film follows a teacher and secret artist whose encounter with a young woman awakens a shared hunger for self-expression. It is quiet, restrained and full of the sort of longing that makes a paintbrush feel like contraband.

Alzaidi is interested in silence, creativity and what happens when people discover they want more than the life assigned to them. His cinema isn't loud, but it does have a pulse. It understands that art can be soft, beautiful and still mildly dangerous to everyone invested in keeping things exactly as they are.

One to watch: Norah — a poetic drama about art, desire and the terrible inconvenience of having an inner life.

Nayla Al Khaja is often described as the UAE’s first female film director, which is both historically important and a lot to fit into one introduction. Over more than two decades, she has become one of the country’s most recognisable filmmakers, moving between shorts, commercials, television and features while steadily expanding what Emirati cinema can look and feel like.

Her shorts, including Malal, The Neighbour, Animal and The Shadow, earned festival attention and built a style that often mixes social tension with psychological unease. Her feature debut Three pushed further into thriller and horror territory, while Baab continued her interest in fantasy, trauma and the things families prefer not to mention over dinner.

Al Khaja’s films often look polished, then quietly begin misbehaving. They are drawn to domestic spaces, unspoken fears and the supernatural as a useful way of saying: perhaps the real horror was the social pressure all along. Subtle? Sometimes. Haunted? Frequently.

One to watch: Three — a psychological thriller with supernatural edges and a strong argument for not ignoring what a household is trying very hard not to say.

Majid Al Ansari is one of the Gulf’s strongest genre directors, which is another way of saying he knows exactly what to do with a locked room, a bad feeling and a man who should absolutely not be trusted. His debut feature Zinzana, also known as Rattle the Cage, put him on the map with a tense thriller set largely inside a police station cell.

The film was picked up by Netflix and helped show that Emirati cinema could do genre without treating it as a guilty pleasure. Al Ansari later worked across television, including Paranormal and Kaboos, before returning to features with The Vile — Hoba in Arabic — a psychological-supernatural horror film about polygamy, motherhood, betrayal and the kind of domestic arrangement that really should come with a warning label.

His work matters because it refuses the idea that Gulf cinema has to be solemn to be taken seriously. Al Ansari uses horror and thrillers to get at family, masculinity, control and fear. The ghosts are useful, obviously, but the living tend to be doing most of the damage.

One to watch: Zinzana — tight, nasty and proof that sometimes one room is all a thriller needs.

Ali F. Mostafa is one of the key names in modern Emirati feature filmmaking. Born in London and raised in the UAE, Mostafa studied at the London Film School before returning to Dubai and building a career as a director, writer and producer.

His 2009 film City of Life follows intersecting lives across Dubai: Emirati, South Asian, European, wealthy, working-class, restless and lost. It became a regional box-office success and is often discussed as a foundational Emirati feature. More importantly, it treated Dubai as an actual city rather than a skyline with shopping options.

Mostafa followed it with the road movie From A to B, which opened the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and the post-apocalyptic thriller The Worthy, which later reached wider audiences through streaming. His films are often about identity, friendship and the emotional chaos of places that grow faster than people can process. Very Dubai, in other words.

One to watch: City of Life — a key film for understanding how Emirati cinema began framing Dubai as a city of collisions.

Nujoom Alghanem is the documentary heavyweight of this list, and also a poet. One of the UAE’s most important filmmakers, she has directed more than 20 films and built a body of work around memory, labour, gender, heritage and the stories that rarely arrive with red carpets attached.

Her documentaries include Hamama, Amal, Nearby Sky, Sounds of the Sea, Honey, Rain and Dust and Sharp Tools. Her work has won major regional awards, and she represented the UAE at the Venice Biennale in 2019, which most people would sensibly make their whole personality. Alghanem, however, had already built a whole career by then.

Her cinema is patient, observant and deeply human. She is interested in people as keepers of disappearing worlds: healers, camel owners, workers, artists, women whose lives do not come pre-packaged for international audiences. In a region often described through speed, wealth and architecture, Alghanem looks for texture and memory. Radical, really, to remember that people live inside all that infrastructure.

One to watch: Nearby Sky — a beautiful documentary portrait of Fatima Al Hameli, one of the first Emirati women to take her camels into auctions and beauty pageants.