While growing up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Ali Al Kalthami watched a VHS tape of Goodfellas and felt a sense of familiarity. “Wow, this is like my uncles in suits, you know?” Al Kalthami said, of the Italian-American characters played by Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta. “Not the violence, but the sarcasm and the sense of humor. We have that. And just so masculine. So I’m like, ‘Well, who is this guy, Martin Scorsese? How can he tell a story like this?’ I was having that sense, like, I want to do something like this? How to do? I’m in Saudi Arabia. There’s no cinema.”

In the early 1980s, before 34-year-old Al Kalthami was born, Saudi Arabia banned movie theaters amid a wave of religious ultra-conservatism; last month, as part of a series of economically motivated reforms in the country initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or M.B.S., as he’s known, the kingdom lifted the ban, and, in mid-May, Al Kalthami was speaking from the sun-bleached roof deck of the first ever Saudi Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, where his short comedy, Wasati, is screening. In the tented area below, a man in a flowing white thawb was serving spicy Saudi coffee in tiny china cups, while some of the eight other Saudi filmmakers with short films at Cannes mingled among signs promoting “A Kingdom of Opportunity.”

Saudi Arabia has just announced one of the world’s most generous film-production tax incentives—a 35% location rebate on films that shoot in the country and a 50% rebate for any local talent employed—as well as partnerships with the University of Southern California and Film Independent. At a press conference here in Cannes, the Saudi Film Council delivered a carefully planned pitch for its nascent film industry, handing out lushly photographed guides to Saudi film locations, a book with data on the young, digitally savvy Saudi audience, Saudi Film Council–branded totes and Moleskine notebooks, and a small gold box of dates. During the press conference, reporters peppered Ahmad Al Maziad, the C.E.O. of Saudi Arabia’s General Culture Authority, with such cultural questions as whether women would be allowed to wear Western dress on film sets. “The content guidelines will be shared with everyone,” Al Maziad answered. “Western dresses? It’s already there.”

“We’re using Cannes as a platform to say, ‘Here we are.’ You know? Welcome to Saudi,” Al Maziad said, in an interview at the Saudi Pavilion later that day. “We’re coming to build an industry. We’re not coming for a marketing campaign or a one-off hub of activity.”

Changes in Saudi culture as part of M.B.S.’s “Vision 2030,” a plan to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil and diversify its economy, have been swift and powerful—next month, women in the kingdom will finally be allowed to drive. But M.B.S. is a leader with a mixed legacy in Saudi Arabia, for detaining political rivals within the kingdom and intervening in a civil war in Yemen against regional rival Iran. However complicated his politics, M.B.S. has found many interested high-profile partners in the U.S. in his effort to open up the country to the film industry; during a visit to Los Angeles in April, he met with Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger, and William Morris Endeavor boss Ari Emanuel.

According to Al Maziad, the reforms in Saudi Arabia, including the ones that will affect issues like film censorship, are being carefully calibrated to work within conservative Saudi culture. Al Maziad said his agency, the General Cultural Authority, and another group, the General Commission for Audiovisual Media, are conducting public surveys and reviewing social-media sentiment to determine how much change the Saudi public can handle. “When the changes came, first of all, it wasn’t sudden,” Al Maziad said. “People have been using the Internet, [they] have been outside. They’ve seen a lot of the things in their international visits. . . . There’s a lot of access to digital. So I think it’s been there, and it needed a leader to bring it up. As in any other society, you will have people who are happy with it, and you have people who have issues with it, and as society matures and adapts, we’ll see.”