Cairo Film Festival opens with I Play Rocky for 50th edition

The 47th Cairo Intl. Film Festival runs Nov. 11–20 with 145 films from 64 countries: 17 world premieres, five international premieres and 87 Middle East and North Africa premieres. The festival marks 50 years since its founding and opens with Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky.”

Farrelly, director of “Green Book,” the 2019 Academy Awards best-picture winner, made “I Play Rocky,” which chronicles Sylvester Stallone’s struggle to get his “Rocky” screenplay to the screen while insisting on playing the lead. The original “Rocky” reached cinemas in 1976, the year the festival was founded, giving the opener a direct anniversary link.

Festival president and veteran actor Hussein Fahmy told Variety that the central task is bringing Egypt’s film history to younger audiences, particularly through restored classics. He said: “This remains my dream, to have this young generation aware of our history, of how Egyptian cinema was actually dominating the whole Middle East.”

He also wants Cairo to stand with the world’s major festivals, arguing that credibility earns audience trust in the films it brings and the jury it selects. No comparative attendance, financing or jury data accompanies the claim.

Variety reported that “Dancing Angels” was pulled from the Critics’ Week competition, then had its invitation restored, before its filmmaking team declined to premiere it there. The report gives no reason for the withdrawal or reversal, showing a credibility problem without establishing its cause.

Fahmy acknowledged that attracting audiences has become less predictable because social and international conditions affect spectators’ taste and mood. The announcement sets no attendance target, ticket plan or advance-sales figure.

International competition

The festival’s announced International Competition contains 12 films, including two Egyptian productions:

• “Al Baraneya,” by Ashgan El-Hamus: A family lives among jasmine fields outside Cairo, where a landowner’s repeated offer to buy their property threatens its livelihood.
• “BerleeN_,” by Ahmad Abdalla: The world premiere follows three Arab strangers confronting their pasts during one day in the German capital. Cairo-based Film Clinic, headed by veteran producer and former festival director Mohamed Hefzy, produced it.

Other regional contenders include:

• “In the Darkness I See You,” by Nadim Tabet: A supernatural drama around a construction site, where tension rises between Syrian workers and Lebanese villagers.
• “Strawberries,” by Laïla Marrakchi: Moroccan seasonal workers face exploitation on farms in southern Spain. The film premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and is Morocco’s submission for the international feature Oscar.
• “Heysel 85,” by Romanian-Belgian director Teodora Ana Mihai: Revisits the deadly 1985 football stadium disaster in Brussels, which left 39 people dead.
• “Four Minus Three,” by Adrian Goiginger: Follows a professional clown coping with the loss of her family.
• “Inherited,” by Morteza Alizadeh: Follows a woman on death row who learns that pregnancy is her only way to delay execution. It has its world premiere in Cairo.

Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch chairs the international competition jury, which also includes Chinese actor Fan Bingbing and Belgian director Laura Wandel.

Arab cinema horizons

The festival’s seven-film Horizons of Arab Cinema section includes two world premieres:

• “Your Daughter,” by Sara Shazli: The world-premiere documentary examines Shazli’s relationship with her mother, filmmaker and producer Marianne Khoury, niece of Youssef Chahine. As Shazli prepares for motherhood, she considers Khoury’s lifelong devotion to cinema and her own childhood.
• “Al Baseer – The Blind Ferryman,” by Ali Toffan Al-Fatlawi: Follows a blind ferryman in southern Iraq’s marshes who falls in love with a mysterious woman no one else believes.
• “Magma,” by Mia Bendrimia: Examines colonialism’s effects on her family across Algeria and France.
• “The Day of Wrath: Tales from Tripoli,” by Rania Rafei: Traces decades of political and social upheaval in northern Lebanon.

Out of competition

The festival’s out-of-competition slate includes internationally acclaimed prize winners and auteurs:

• Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” the Cannes Grand Prix winner; Emin Alper’s “Salvation,” the Berlin Silver Bear winner; and Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure,” the Cannes Jury Prize winner.
• Hirokazu Kore-eda has two films, “Look Back” and 2026 Palme d’Or nominee “Sheep in the Box.”
• Additional selections include Radu Jude’s “The Diary of a Chambermaid,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s “Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars” and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved.”

Restoring Egyptian film history

Launched last year, the festival’s Restored Egyptian Classics program contains 27 titles, including Salah Abu Seif’s “Cairo 30” and “The Second Wife”; Henry Barakat’s “The Sin”; Youssef Chahine’s “The People and the Nile”; and Hassan el-Imam’s adaptations of Naguib Mahfouz’s “Palace Walk” and “Palace of Desire.”

Fahmy called the restored films, including Egyptian black-and-white cinema, a history audiences should know as they move into the future. The announcement gives no restoration methods, formats or rights details.

Awards and youth programs

The anniversary edition will honor filmmakers Matteo Garrone and Abderrahmane Sissako with Golden Pyramid Honorary Awards for Lifetime Achievement, alongside Egyptian screenwriter Medhat El Adl and cinematographer Saeed Shimi. Egyptian actor Asser Yassin will receive the Faten Hamama Award for Excellence.

Fahmy’s youth strategy has three named components: the New Wave program, a new Cairo Kids section and an extended reality program. The festival’s industry arm, Cairo Industry Days, runs Nov. 14–19 with masterclasses and conversations for filmmakers and industry figures, plus financing, training and networking opportunities, particularly for Arab filmmakers.

The announcement promises reach without specifying participant numbers, audience ages or funding. The youth plan is a direction, not a measured commitment.

What does the anniversary change for Egyptian filmgoing?

For filmgoers, the practical change is access to 145 selected films, including 27 restored Egyptian classics, plus three youth programs. The restored slate addresses Fahmy’s cultural-memory concern; the new sections seek future attendance. The announcement does not state audience size, ticket pricing or attendance results, so the practical effect remains untested.

Fahmy reduced the ambition to one line: “As the festival gets older, I want it to become younger,” he said. The 50th edition succeeds only if its restored history and new formats give younger viewers a reason to return.