Hurghada Youth Cinema Festival Screens Karim Abdel Aziz's Two Graduation Films
The festival is showing two short films the actor directed as a film student, in a strand devoted to the graduation projects of directors who later became household names.
4 September 2026
The Hurghada Youth Cinema Festival is screening two short films directed by Karim Abdel Aziz, the graduation projects the actor made as a film student long before he became one of Egypt's biggest screen stars, according to Youm7, Al-Masry Al-Youm, El Watan and Masrawy.
Several outlets framed the screening as the only time audiences will see Abdel Aziz credited as a director. Al-Bawaba News and Akhbar El-Youm both headlined it as him directing "for the first and last time", while Mobtada described the festival as rediscovering his beginnings behind the camera.
The two films belong to a festival strand devoted to the graduation projects of directors who later became well known, Sada El-Balad reported — a programme that puts student work by established names back on a cinema screen.
What the reports did not give: the titles of the two films, their running times, or the day and venue of the screening inside the festival programme. None of the outlets said whether Abdel Aziz would attend in person.
The screening sits inside the festival's fourth edition, which Hurghada News reported opened with a tribute to the actor Mostafa Khater and carries 49 films in its programme.
For residents and visitors, the youth cinema festival is one of the coast's few cultural fixtures outside the hotel circuit, and a one-off like this draws an audience well beyond film students. Anyone hoping to catch the two shorts will need to follow the festival's daily programme, since none of the reports carried a screening time or venue.