El Gouna's Film Festival Runs to 23 October: 77 Films, a Record 10 Arab Titles and a Mohamed Khan Tribute
A week of screenings is left in El Gouna. The ninth edition opened on Thursday 15 October and runs to 23 October with 77 films, the festival's highest Arab count at 10 titles, a fourth Window on Palestine strand and talks including a Mona Zaki masterclass.
16 October 2026
The ninth El Gouna Film Festival opened on Thursday 15 October and runs until 23 October, which leaves a week of screenings, discussions and industry sessions in the town. This edition is held under the theme Cinema for Humanity: Archiving Narratives and takes in 77 films across features, documentaries and shorts, according to Egyptian Streets' report of the festival's opening statement.
The programme leans towards Arab cinema: the festival has 10 Arab films, its highest number to date, the culture outlet YUNG reports.
In the competitions
- Feature competition: Moroccan director Yassine El-Idrissi's Halima, Miroslav Terzić's Three Weeks After and Yukiko Sode's Lovers of All the Nights.
- Egypt's Safe Exit, directed by Mohammed Hammad, is in the feature narrative competition. It follows a young Coptic security guard in Cairo living with the trauma of witnessing his father's murder as a child.
- Documentary competition: Big Boys Don't Cry by Mohamed Mostafa, Citizen Osama by Ahmad Hassouna and The Return of Captain Kabonga by Amir El-Shenawy.
- Shorts: 13 films in competition, among them Omar Rammal's Kentucky Gaza, Mariam Abdelgaber's Disquiet, which has its world premiere here, and I Broke a Vase, a Yemeni–Emirati–Sudanese co-production.
- Out of competition, the international programme includes Pawel Pawlikowski's Fatherland and İlker Çatak's Yellow Letters.
- Window on Palestine returns for a fourth consecutive edition.
The festival's opening film was All About Corinne by French director Marc Fitoussi, starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain, scheduled to screen on Friday 16 October.
Beyond the screenings
Ten years after the death of Egyptian director Mohamed Khan, a touchstone of Egyptian realist cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, the festival is holding discussions dedicated to his work. Mona Zaki, who was honoured at the opening ceremony, is to give a masterclass during the festival, and director Yousry Nasrallah is giving one as well. Producer Angus Finney is leading a session on artificial intelligence and the film industry.
Two new industry strands run alongside: CineGouna Series, a platform for developing Arab television series projects, and Safe Harbour MENA, launched with the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the International Emerging Film Talent Fund to support filmmakers who have been displaced or face threats to their safety.
Neither report lists screening times or venues, and the festival's own schedule is where those are published. Our separate reports covered Thursday's opening ceremony and the award to Mona Zaki.