El Gouna Film Festival's Ninth Edition Spotlights 10 Arab and World Titles

The ninth El Gouna Film Festival opens on the Red Sea with a lineup that spans prize winners from Berlin, Venice, Sundance, Shanghai and CPH:DOX, alongside world premieres from Egyptian debut filmmakers. Mohammed Hammad's Berlinale premiere "Safe Exit" leads the Feature Narrative Competition.

The selection, across narrative, documentary and short-film competitions, gathers stories of love, memory and family as well as war and displacement. Several titles return to El Gouna as completed works after earlier support from CineGouna, the festival's industry arm — evidence of the event's growing role in nurturing Arab cinema before it reaches the screen.

What should audiences track in the narrative competition?

"Safe Exit" (2026) marks Hammad's sophomore feature, a decade after his debut. Set in downtown Cairo, it follows Samaan, a Coptic Christian security guard haunted by his father's murder by extremists, whose life changes when he meets Fatma, an impoverished sex worker. Hammad explores faith, isolation and contradictions in contemporary Egyptian society. His first film, "Withered Green," screened at El Gouna's inaugural edition in 2017.

Danielle Arbid's "Only Rebels Win" (2026), which opened the Panorama section at this year's Berlinale, stars Hiam Abbass as Suzanne, a widowed Lebanese woman of Palestinian origin who falls for Osmane, a younger undocumented Sudanese migrant in Beirut. When war made shooting in Lebanon impossible, Arbid had a local crew film Beirut locations without actors, then used the footage as rear projections while shooting in a Paris studio.

Miroslav Terzić's "3 Weeks After" (2026), fresh from winning the Europa Cinemas Label at Karlovy Vary, strands students at an isolated mountain hotel three weeks after a classmate's suicide, widening its focus to the silent bystanders who never intervened.

Yassine El Idrissi's fiction debut "Halima" (2026) won best director and best actress (Khadija Amari) at the Shanghai International Film Festival. It traces how a Moroccan widow, threatened with displacement, entered the illegal cannabis trade — drawing on El Idrissi's years as a photojournalist.

Which documentaries stand out?

Ahmed Hassouna's "Citizen Osama" (2026), a Venice premiere, follows Gaza photojournalist Osama Al-Ashi documenting war while protecting his wife and newborn son. Palestine has selected it as its official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2027 Academy Awards.

Amir El-Shenawy's "The Return of Captain Kabonga" (2026) makes its world premiere at El Gouna after participating in CineGouna Funding in 2025, where it picked up several cash and in-kind post-production awards. It follows veteran street wrestler Ashraf "Kabonga" Mahrous reviving WWE-inspired shows in Ismailia amid Egypt's economic crisis.

Dongnan Chen's "Whispers in May" (2026), winner of the top DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX, blends documentary and myth as 14-year-old Qihuo seeks a traditional skirt for her coming-of-age ceremony in China's Liangshan Mountains. "Nuisance Bear" (2026), from Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance and expands the directors' Oscar-shortlisted 2021 short, showing polar bear migration from the bears' point of view.

What do the shorts reveal?

Two Egyptian world premieres close the list. Jad Chahine's "My Village Blamed Women for the End of Mankind" (Al Khabith) follows a mysterious epidemic that turns a fishing village against its women. "At its core, the film is about a man trying to protect three women from death, only to discover that protection itself can become part of the violence inflicted upon them," Chahine said.

Mariam Abdelgaber's debut "Disquiet" (Irtibak), starring Rakeen Saad and Menha El Batraoui, draws a young supermarket cashier into the private life of a vanished customer.

With CineGouna-backed projects now premiering as finished films, the festival's industry pipeline is visibly delivering — a signal that El Gouna's ninth edition may matter less for its red carpet than for the careers it builds.