In his 2006 documentary Cinema 500km, Saudi director Abdullah Al Eyaf detailed how Saudis who wanted to visit the cinema had to travel to neighbouring countries to do so, following a man in Riyadh as he made the 500km journey to Bahrain to watch just one film. In Bahrain — just a short drive over the King Fahd Causeway for those living near the Saudi city of Dammam — Al Eyaf spoke to the head of a cinema who claimed that 90 percent of his customers were from the Kingdom.

Bahrain wasn’t the only destination for film-loving Saudis wanting a more immersive experience than simply watching pirated DVDs at home. In 2012, the then mayor of Riyadh asserted that some 230,000 tourists from his country had flown to the United Arabia Emirates in the summer of 2010 “simply for the sake of watching movies.”

More than a decade on, and, thanks to the 35-year ban on...