The Only Egyptian Film in Competition at El Gouna This Year Premiered at the Berlinale
Mohammed Hammad's psychological drama 'Safe Exit' is the sole Egyptian title in the Narrative Films Competition at the ninth El Gouna Film Festival, after a run through Berlin and Shanghai. The report gives no festival dates or screening times.
4 October 2026
Safe Exit, directed by Mohammed Hammad, is the only Egyptian film competing in the Narrative Films Competition at the ninth edition of the El Gouna Film Festival, according to CairoScene.
The psychological drama arrives on the coast with a festival run already behind it. It had its world premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival in February, went on to screen at the Shanghai International Film Festival, and was shortlisted for Best Screenplay at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
The film follows Samaan, a young Coptic Christian working night shifts as a security guard in a residential building in Downtown Cairo. He writes at night and dreams of publishing a first novel, while living with chronic PTSD after witnessing his father's murder by religious extremists in Libya as a child. His routine begins to shift when he meets Fatimah, a young Muslim woman, and an unexpected friendship gradually breaks through the isolation he has built around his trauma.
'Safe Exit' stars Marwan Waleed, Noha Foad and Hazem Essam, and is produced by Kholoud Saad alongside co-producers from across the region. It is Hammad's second feature, after 'Withered Green', which screened at the Locarno Film Festival and won him Best Director at the Dubai International Film Festival.
The CairoScene report does not give the festival's dates, nor when or where the film screens in El Gouna. For anyone planning a trip around the festival, that detail is still to come — the competition line-up is what has been confirmed so far.