Four Qatari Features to Premiere at Doha Film Festival

Four Qatari feature films will hold their world premieres at the Doha Film Festival, running Nov. 19–27 in the Qatari capital. Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, who also directs the festival, called it "a watershed moment for Qatar's film and creative industries" in a statement.

It's the first time the festival has carried this many homegrown features. The event, now in its second edition, built its Made in Qatar competition strand around short films only. The four new features bypass the competition entirely and screen as special screenings — a signal, effectively, that Qatar now has enough feature-length output to program outside its own talent contest.

The context matters here. Qatar, a small state whose wealth comes from oil and gas, has been pushing into media and entertainment as part of a broader economic diversification. Three of the four premieres — "Jodari Meno," "A Very Ordinary Life" and "First to Fly" — received backing from Media City Qatar, the government-backed media hub, alongside the Doha Film Institute.

"It's great to see not one but three films supported by Media City selected to screen in the special screenings program at Doha Film Festival 2026," Media City Qatar CEO Hamad Omar AlMannai said in a statement.

What's actually premiering?

• "First to Fly" — an inspirational documentary by Rodrigo Vazquez Salessi about two young Arab gymnasts who became the first athletes in Qatar's history to compete at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships.
• "A Very Ordinary Life" — a Qatar-Morocco co-production directed by Mohamed Deniz, following a retired Qatari pilot and a young Moroccan art teacher who are, unknowingly, father and daughter.
• "Jodari Meno" — a documentary by Qatari filmmaker, freediver and spear fisherman Jamal Al Khanji about his quest to land a world-record dogtooth tuna.
• "When the News Breaks You" — a documentary by Qatari filmmaker Hamad Al Hajri examining the challenges faced by journalists working across Middle East war zones.
• A special episode of "Elzam" — a documentary series produced by Katara Studios following a group of falconers on hunting expeditions, a tradition prized in Qatar and the wider Arab world.

What does this change for Qatar's film industry?

In practical terms, it marks the shift from shorts to features. "To present four feature films and an original series from Qatar at Doha Film Festival is a powerful reflection of how far our creative ecosystem has come," Alremaihi said.

Her framing is institutional rather than artistic. "The growing contributions of national entities demonstrate what can be achieved when creative institutions work together towards a shared purpose," she continued. "We are building a sustainable industry by creating opportunities, developing capabilities and connecting Qatar's talent with the world."

The mechanism, in other words, is state coordination: a film institute, a government media hub and studios like Katara channeling money and infrastructure toward local directors. The festival then supplies the showcase.

The premieres sit inside a larger program. As previously announced, the festival's competition lineup holds 15 titles, mostly Middle East premieres of films from the region, seven of them directed by women. The opener is Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq's drama "The Station," which explores the impact of Yemen's civil war on the country.

Whether four features in one year becomes an annual baseline or a one-off cluster will be the real test of Alremaihi's "sustainable industry" claim — and next year's Made in Qatar slate should give the first answer.