10 Films to Track at El Gouna, From Cannes and Berlin Standouts to Rising Arab Filmmakers

The ninth edition of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival brings together a strong showing of Arab cinema to the Red Sea, with a lineup spanning emerging regional voices, established filmmakers, and prize-winning titles from Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance and Shanghai.

Across its narrative, documentary and short-film competitions, this year’s selection features stories of love, memory and family, as well as war and displacement, while offering glimpses of communities navigating political, social and economic upheaval. Several titles also underscore El Gouna’s growing role in nurturing projects before they reach the screen, with filmmakers and projects previously supported through CineGouna, the festival’s industry arm, returning with completed works.

Here are 10 titles to keep an eye on at this year’s festival.

Feature Narrative Competition

“Safe Exit” (2026)
(Mohammed Hammad, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Qatar, Germany. Produced by Kholoud Saad, Dora Bouchoucha, Dina Farouk, Ibrahim El-Batout, and May Odeh)

A decade after his feature debut, Egyptian filmmaker Mohammed Hammad delivers his sophomore film, “Safe Exit,” which premiered at this year’s Berlinale. Set in downtown Cairo, it centers on 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 facing struggles of her own. Hammad explores faith, isolation, and some of the contradictions of contemporary Egyptian society. His debut, “Withered Green,” screened at El Gouna’s inaugural edition in 2017.

“Only Rebels Win” (2026)
(Danielle Arbid, France, Lebanon, Qatar. Produced by Omar El Kadi, Nadia Turincev and Georges Schoucair)

Widowed and with her children now grown, Suzanne (Hiam Abbass), a Lebanese woman of Palestinian origin, finds herself free to put herself first. When she falls for Osmane, a younger undocumented Sudanese migrant in Beirut, their relationship puts that newfound independence to the test. When the war made shooting in Lebanon impossible, director Danielle Arbid had a local crew film the Beirut locations without actors, then used the footage as rear projections while shooting in a Paris studio. “Only Rebels Win” opened the Panorama section at this year’s Berlinale.

“3 Weeks After” (2026)
(Miroslav Terzić, Serbia, Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg. Produced by Snežana van Houwelingen and Branislav Trifunović)

Fresh off of winning the Europa Cinemas Label at Karlovy Vary, Miroslav Terzić’s “3 Weeks After” centers on a group of students stranded at an isolated mountain hotel three weeks after a classmate dies by suicide. Questions soon emerge about the bullying that preceded his death, and about how many of them knew what was happening. Rather than concentrating solely on those responsible, Terzić widens the circle to the classmates who were silent bystanders who never intervened.

“Halima” (2026)
(Yassine El Idrissi, Morocco. Produced by Yassine El Idrissi)

Best director and best actress winner (Khadija Amari) at the Shanghai International Film Festival, “Halima” marks Moroccan filmmaker Yassine El Idrissi’s fiction feature debut. Moving between Halima’s present-day life on the Moroccan coast and her past in the Rif mountains, the film traces how the widow, threatened with displacement from her land and struggling to support herself, became involved in the illegal cannabis trade. Drawing on El Idrissi’s years as a photojournalist and his encounters with marginalized communities across Morocco, “Halima” looks at the region’s hidden cannabis economy while resisting easy judgments about the people whose livelihoods depend on it.

Feature Documentary Competition

“Citizen Osama” (2026)
(Ahmed Hassouna, Palestine, France. Produced by Laura Nikolov and Rashid Masharawi. Co-produced by Ahmed Hassouna)

In northern Gaza, photojournalist Osama Al-Ashi is documenting a war while trying to survive it. A Venice premiere, Ahmed Hassouna’s documentary follows Al-Ashi as his work to record the devastation all around him collides with the responsibility of keeping his wife and newborn son out of harm’s way. The film has been selected as Palestine’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2027 Academy Awards.

“The Return of Captain Kabonga” (2026)
(Amir El-Shenawy, Egypt. Produced by Ahmed Abdelsalam)

In Ismailia, a city along Egypt’s Suez Canal, veteran street wrestler Ashraf “Kabonga” Mahrous is trying to revive the WWE-inspired wrestling shows he once staged with a group of local amateurs. Amir El-Shenawy tracks that effort alongside Kabonga’s more immediate struggle to make ends meet and support his family while Egypt grapples with economic crisis. “The Return of Captain Kabonga” makes its world premiere at El Gouna after participating in CineGouna Funding in 2025 where the project picked up several cash and in-kind post-production awards.

“Whispers in May” (2026)
(Dongnan Chen, Hong Kong, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden. Produced by Jia Zhao and Kay Xu. Co-produced by Heejung Oh and Malin Hüber)

Fourteen-year-old Qihuo gets her first period and sets out with her friends to find a traditional skirt for her coming-of-age ceremony in China’s remote Liangshan Mountains. With her parents away working in the city, her journey captures how life is changing for young people even as long-held customs remain firmly rooted. Blending documentary with fictional and mythical elements, Dongnan Chen’s “Whispers in May” won the top DOX:AWARD at this year’s CPH:DOX.

“Nuisance Bear” (2026)
(Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, Canada, U.S., U.K. Produced by Michael Code, Teddy Leifer and Will N. Miller)

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance, “Nuisance Bear” follows polar bears along their centuries-old migration route through Manitoba, Canada, where they increasingly cross paths with tourists, wildlife officers and hunters. Directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman expand their Oscar-shortlisted 2021 short of the same name into a feature that shifts the usual nature-documentary perspective, showing the bears’ migration from their point of view, with humans and the town itself becoming the intruders.

Short Film Competition

“My Village Blamed Women for the End of Mankind” (Al Khabith) (2026)
(Jad Chahine, Egypt, United Kingdom. Produced by Yara Goubran)

When a mysterious epidemic begins infecting women in a remote fishing village, fear quickly turns the community against them. “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,” director Jad Chahine explains. That contradiction feeds into a larger question Chahine poses to the audience, and perhaps to himself: “If the end is inevitable, what gives us the right to decide when it begins? And when does our fear of it make us create it with our own hands?” Making its world premiere at El Gouna, the film follows Chahine’s Cannes La Cinef-selected “The Call of the Brook.”

“Disquiet” (Irtibak) (2026)
(Mariam Abdelgaber, Egypt. Produced by Tamer Ashry, Zeina Eissa, Alia El Shahbour and Mariam Abdelgaber)

A young supermarket cashier is given a key by an elderly regular who asks her to check on her apartment if she ever disappears. When the woman stops coming to the store, the cashier decides to use it, drawing her into the private life of someone she barely knew. “Disquiet” marks Mariam Abdelgaber’s debut in narrative filmmaking and stars Rakeen Saad and Menha El Batraoui. The film makes its world premiere at El Gouna.