Since its founding in 2017, the El Gouna Film Festival has become a cornerstone of the Arab world’s cinematic landscape. This year’s edition, running from October 16 to 24, continues its tradition of spotlighting visionary storytelling, particularly from women redefining regional cinema. From experimental documentaries to intimate dramas, these female directors are reshaping how Arab and African experiences are seen and felt on screen.
Family, friendship and survival: Arab cinema takes centre stage at GFF
A graduate of NYU Tisch and recipient of the Ang Lee and DAAD scholarships, German-Tunisian filmmaker Maïssa Lihedheb channels dark humour and dystopian themes to encourage socio-political critique. Her latest short, Samra’s Dollhouse, premiering at El Gouna, follows a heartbroken director casting Hedi, her ideal male lead, for a romance film. As reality slips into fiction, Hedi begins to suspect his role eerily mirrors reality. Produced with an almost entirely Tunisian and female crew, the project exemplifies Lihedheb’s belief that regional collaboration and global storytelling are a form of activism.
A Moroccan filmmaker based in Brussels, Karima Saïdi’s career began in film editing after graduating from INSAS and earning a master’s in film writing and analysis from ULB. Over the years, she has collaborated on celebrated documentaries including The Damned of the Sea by Jawad Raleb. Yet it is through her directorial work that her voice feels most personal – films like Aïcha and A Way Home map the fragile terrain between exile and belonging. At El Gouna, her documentary Those Who Watch Over receives its world premiere, exploring the ways in which Arab and African immigrants buried in Brussels continue to influence and connect with the living.
Born in Paris to Egyptian and French parents, Sharon Hakim writes and directs with a gaze that is both tender and incisive. A graduate of the American University of Paris and The New School in New York, she examines the intersection of identity, spirituality, and female awakening. Her El Gouna contribution, The Devil and the Bicycle, follows a young Lebanese girl navigating the rituals of religion and desire. Adapted from a short story by Tamara Saade, the film has already captivated audiences at BFI London and Clermont-Ferrand.
From Gaza to Gouna: stories that refuse erasure
Jordanian-Palestinian filmmaker Yassmina Karajah creates from a place where documentary and fiction meet. After earning her law degree at the University of Bristol, she studied film at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Film Centre, establishing a reputation for emotionally charged storytelling. Her early short Rupture premiered at TIFF and earned a place on The Criterion Channel. This year, she brings Ambush to El Gouna. A vivid exploration of youth and music in downtown Amman, the film is set against the pulse of a makeshift techno club, following two strangers whose lives momentarily converge.
Before turning to cinema, Cairo-based filmmaker Yomna Khattab studied international economics at the Sorbonne. Her path into storytelling began through literature; Khattab’s short story collection Videotape from the Nineties, published by Dar El Shorouk in 2015, captured the disquiet and nostalgia of Egypt’s urban youth. That same sensitivity would carry into her screenwriting, with the director’s first short Let’s Play Yesterday winning the Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung in 2021. At this year’s El Gouna Film Festival, Khattab presents 50 Meters, her debut feature documentary. Set within the serene confines of a Cairo swimming pool, the film follows her and her father as they rediscover each other through the lens of distance, work, and time.
Tunisian director, screenwriter, and photographer Amel Guellaty moves fluidly between cinema and visual art. After studying law at the Sorbonne, she worked on films by Olivier Assayas and Raja Amari before making her award-winning short Black Mamba. Her debut feature Where the Wind Comes From, which first premiered at Sundance and later screened in Rotterdam and Toronto, is set to arrive at El Gouna for the festival. The film traces the journey of two young Tunisians who leave home in search of freedom, capturing the vast, natural beauty of the country’s south.
