El Gouna Film Festival's New Chief Andrew Mohsen Bets on Discovery

By Elena Vasquez

El Gouna Film Festival's new artistic director Andrew Mohsen has put "discovery" at the center of his first edition, aiming to widen what Red Sea audiences see. "We are trying to draw attention to the films that didn't have the same coverage, or the films we feel our audiences need to see," Mohsen told Variety.

Mohsen, a Cairo International Film Festival veteran, joined El Gouna's programming team in 2023 and later served as head of programming. He succeeds Marianne Khoury in the top job. His plan builds on the festival's established role as a showcase for prize winners from Cannes, Venice and Berlin, while shifting emphasis toward emerging filmmakers.

The stakes are measurable. Major festivals screen roughly one hundred films a year, Mohsen notes, yet prize winners and established directors dominate the conversation while the rest disappear. Competition for world and regional premieres is fierce, and projects backed by other festivals and funds often arrive with premiere commitments already attached.

El Gouna's response: invest through its own funding program and approach filmmakers earlier. "We are trying our best to knock on all doors to see how we can expand our connection with the filmmakers," Mohsen said.

Why regional cinema needs the push

Last year, El Gouna programmed just one non-Egyptian Arab film in its narrative competition and one in documentary — the festival's weakest showing for regional cinema since its 2017 launch. Mohsen wants to deepen ties with Arab filmmakers still building an international profile and forge stronger connections across Africa, where a small pool of titles reaching the international circuit makes competition for projects especially intense.

Internally, he describes an "open kitchen between us" — festival branches exchanging information about filmmakers, projects and guests across an increasingly well-established El Gouna network. He also wants the film selection more closely integrated with CineGouna, the festival's industry and talent-development arm.

A former film critic, Mohsen has attended El Gouna since its 2017 launch. His ambition is to make it a go-to meeting point between Arab filmmakers and the international industry.\n

What changes in the programming?

Genre cinema has a larger presence this year, a choice Mohsen says reflects its growing prominence at major international festivals. A second current runs through the selection, though not by explicit design: fear — within families, under political regimes, or through anxieties characters themselves struggle to name.

Mohsen points to Miroslav Terzić's "Three Weeks After," a study of Serbian students confronting the aftermath of a classmate's death by suicide, as a film where that unease builds slowly. "You feel you are not really comfortable when you're watching the film, that there's something happening, but you cannot put your hand on," he said. "I find this resonates with what's happening in the world today."

Series enter the picture

A new strand, CineGouna Series, extends the industry program into television. Egyptian screenwriter Mariam Naoum leads it. Mohsen frames the move as a natural fit for Egypt, whose television industry has long supplied audiences across the Arab world.

"Series, they're always happening. They're always selling," he said. "So we are very strong." Series remain relatively underrepresented at film festivals in the region, which Mohsen sees as El Gouna's opening.

The expansion is part of a broader effort to make the festival useful to creators beyond screening their work. "You want exposure, you want connections, you want audiences to react to your film? We can offer all of that," he said.

Asked for his dream guests, Mohsen named two: Guillermo del Toro and Park Chan-wook — on a jury, leading a master class, or simply attending. "My two dreams," he said. Whether those names materialize on the Red Sea soon, Mohsen's first edition already signals a festival repositioning itself as a destination for films the circuit overlooks.