Best movies like The Rival Princes of the Gulf

A group of American soldiers stationed in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War find a map they believe will take them to a huge cache of stolen Kuwaiti gold hidden near their base, and they embark on a secret mission that's destined to change everything.

An enterprising Saudi girl signs on for her school's Quran recitation competition as a way to raise the remaining funds she needs in order to buy the green bicycle that has captured her interest.

A team of U.S. government agents is sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.

Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.

The Middle Eastern oil industry is the backdrop of this tense drama, which weaves together numerous story lines. Bennett Holiday is an American lawyer in charge of facilitating a dubious merger of oil companies, while Bryan Woodman, a Switzerland-based energy analyst, experiences both personal tragedy and opportunity during a visit with Arabian royalty. Meanwhile, veteran CIA agent Bob Barnes uncovers an assassination plot with unsettling origins.

Handsomely-mounted historical epic concerns the birth of the Islamic faith and the story of the prophet Mohammed.

On the Arabian Peninsula in the 1930s, two warring leaders come face to face. The victorious Nesib, Emir of Hobeika, lays down his peace terms to rival Amar, Sultan of Salmaah. The two men agree that neither can lay claim to the area of no man’s land between them called The Yellow Belt. In return, Nesib adopts Amar’s two boys Saleeh and Auda as a guarantee against invasion. Twelve years later, Saleeh and Auda have grown into young men. Saleeh, the warrior, itches to escape his gilded cage and return to his father’s land. Auda cares only for books and the pursuit of knowledge. One day, their adopted father Nesib is visited by an American from Texas. He tells the Emir that his land is blessed with oil and promises him riches beyond his wildest imagination. Nesib imagines a realm of infinite possibility, a kingdom with roads, schools and hospitals all paid for by the black gold beneath the barren sand. There is only one problem. The precious oil is located in the Yellow Belt.

Yul Brynner plays political leader Sharif who is sprung from a police van on his way to a firing squad by young loyalists led by Sal Mineo. Yul and the other prisoners kidnap an ambulance and head into the Arabian desert with the police in hot pursuit. All the performances are magnificent: Sal Mineo showing his acting talents, Jack Warden in a wiseguy performance as an employee of Zahrain oil who was involved in embezzlement, Anthony Caruso as a slimy psychotic and the underrated Madlyn Rhue as a nurse who becomes emotionally involved in the proceedings.

A young Arab-American girl struggles with her sexual obsession, a bigoted Army reservist, and her strict father during the Gulf War.

In the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I, a young Bedouin boy experiences a greatly hastened coming of age as he embarks on a perilous desert journey to guide a British officer to his secret destination.

Ali is a young Tunisian who dreams of a better life and ekes out a lonely existence selling contraband oil on the black market. When his father dies, he is forced to care for his two younger sisters who have been left to their own devices in a house from which they will soon be evicted. As he wrestles with the sudden weight of responsibility and the injustices he faces, anger and indignation stir within Ali – that of a generation still fighting to be heard more than a decade after the revolution…

Young Tunisian Hedi lives an ordered life in which he believes there can be no more surprises. His future will play out as other people have planned, until he meets a young woman named Rim at a hotel in Mahdia Hediand. An ostensibly personal story broadens into a panorama of a society in upheaval, an allegory about breaking away from traditions. And a film about the happiness and pain of freedom.

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.

Set in the confines of an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, a community's everyday life is threatened by the ruthless rhythms of Tanneries, rotary driers crushing animal skin, hazards of poisonous waste water, Tahyea desperately clings to her brother, Saqr, whose only dream is to escape.

Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.

In the working class suburbs of Casablanca. Hassan and Issam, father and son, try to survive from day to day, doing small deals for the local underworld. One night, a man they were supposed to kidnap dies accidentally in their car. Hassan and Issam find themselves with a corpse to dispose of. Then begins a long night through the underworld of the city.

In a small (fictional) emirate of the Persian Gulf a world-weary journalist is caught up in a coup where the Emir's son, under the influence of a political renegade, attempts to depose his father - the ruling monarch. Flashbacks of the journalist's life show us how his relationships with the Emir and a beautiful young woman develop and flourish.

A young Palestinian schoolteacher gives birth to her son in an Israeli prison where she fights to protect him, survive and maintain hope.

It is winter in Damascus. Sana, with her eight-year-old son, is living alone while her husband works in Saudi Arabia. When Sana runs out of gas to cook or warm the house, she takes a day off to find a gas cylinder. From there begins a trip into the surroundings of Damas, where Sana finds herself brutally confronted with the effects of war.

An American entrepreneur is closing a deal in Saudi Arabia in 1977. After a fallout with his influential Saudi partners, they have him arrested. Due to the US policy of noninterference in SA, the embassy won't help him. He must escape.

In this partially lost silent film, a man working as a motion picture extra in Hollywood westerns impresses a visiting sheikh with his boxing skills and is engaged to go to Arabia, where he becomes involved in warring and falls in love with a beautiful princess.

An orphaned Arab pearl diver helps a British gunboat catch pirates in the Persian Gulf.

A journalist investigates a newspaper story of the execution of an Arab princess.

A daring, compelling and controversial take on the life of prince Abdulaziz Al Saud (Ibn Saud), founder of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Sir David Attenborough unveils the two stunning underwater realms of Saudi Arabia - the flamboyant Red Sea and the contrasting hot muddy Gulf, capturing for the first time the rare event of Palolo worms spawning at night.

An exploration into the man behind the film-inspired myth, from both Western and Arab perspectives. Thomas Edward Lawrence, a 24-year-old British spy, was a figurehead in the Arab struggle for independence. In 1916, he united Arab tribes and led them in a war against the Turks who ruled over them for 400 years. The consequences of his successes and failures sowed the seeds of conflict that continue to plague the troubled region even today.

December 2, 2010: The Gulf state of Qatar is surprisingly chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, although many signs spoke against it. The football world is amazed: no football culture, a precarious human rights situation, poor infrastructure, hot desert climate. Who is voting for a World Cup that would endanger the lives of millions of fans and players? Rumors of corruption quickly surfaced. The autocratic state is very rich thanks to its deposits of fossil fuels. Bribes, collusion, contract awards: How far did the small Gulf Emirate go to get the World Cup? The research of the documentary film team leads to the trail of secret financial agreements between the emirate and large international companies, especially from France. The reporters get access to confidential documents, indications of corruption, but also violations of workers' labor rights on the World Cup construction sites. From France to Qatar, from Switzerland to Africa, the dark side of this World Cup will be revealed.

After spending four years in jail, Rafik has only one plan, take his son behind the mountains and show him his amazing discovery.

A coming-of-age story set in 1919 about 14 year old Faisal, an Arab prince who is dispatched from the deserts of Arabia to London by his warrior father, Prince Abd Al-Aziz, on a high stakes diplomatic mission to secure the formation of his country.

Jordan, nowadays. After the death of her husband, Nawal, 30s, has to fight for what she thinks is her inheritance for her only daughter in a region where having a son is a game changer.

Marked each year by celebrations, Israel’s Independence Day coincides with the commemoration of Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) — the day Palestinians memorialize their dispossession and displacement. For Tamer (Mahmoud Bakri, a member of the acting dynasty begun by veteran Palestinian performer Mohammad Bakri) and his high-school friends — Safwat (Mohammed Abd El Rahman), Shekel (Mohammad Karaki), and Rida (Ahmed Zaghmouri) — the social and psychological dissonance of being Palestinian in Israel is a daily struggle that is only heightened in the lead-up to Nakba Day.

In 2013, in Cairo, a tragic fate brings together several detainees from different political and social backgrounds inside a police truck, during the turmoil that followed the ousting of president Morsi.

In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood in 2006, a community of ordinary people try to live their everyday lives amidst the threat of unpredictable violence. At the heart of these intersecting stories we find Sara, a single mother and novelist, who regains her will to write after witnessing the forced exile of her Christian neighbour and best friend Sabiha. With the news of Saddam Hussein's sudden execution shortly before the New Year, Sara and her neighbours brace themselves for an uncertain future. Yet, like a miracle, each is able to sustain a fragile sense of hope.

A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.

Rabih, a young blind man, lives in a small village in Lebanon. He sings in a choir and edits Braille documents for an income. His life unravels when he tries to apply for a passport and discovers that his identification card, which he has carried his entire life, is fake. Now he must travel across Lebanon in search of his identity.