10 Films to Track at El Gouna, From Cannes and Berlin Standouts to Rising Arab Filmmakers — SkimNews
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- El Gouna Film Festival launched its ninth edition with a slate drawn from Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, Shanghai and CPH:DOX, with stories touching love, memory, displacement, and communities navigating political and economic upheaval.
- "Citizen Osama" by Ahmed Hassouna has been selected as Palestine's official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2027 Academy Awards; the Venice-premiering documentary follows Gaza photojournalist Osama Al-Ashi documenting war while shielding his wife and newborn son.
- "Halima" by Yassine El Idrissi won best director and best actress (Khadija Amari) at the Shanghai International Film Festival, tracing a Moroccan widow threatened with displacement who turns to the illegal cannabis trade in the Rif mountains.
- "Only Rebels Win" by Danielle Arbid, starring Hiam Abbass as a Lebanese-Palestinian woman who falls for an undocumented Sudanese migrant, opened the Panorama section at this year's Berlinale; war in Lebanon forced the crew to film Beirut locations without actors and use rear projections from a Paris studio.
- "Nuisance Bear" by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance's U.S. Documentary Competition, expanding their 2021 Oscar-shortlisted short into a feature that follows polar bears through Manitoba from the animals' point of view.
- "The Return of Captain Kabonga" world premieres at El Gouna after participating in CineGouna Funding in 2025, where it collected cash and in-kind post-production awards — illustrating the festival's pipeline of nurturing projects from industry platform to completed screen work.
- "Safe Exit" marks Mohammed Hammad's sophomore feature, a decade after his debut "Withered Green" screened at El Gouna's inaugural 2017 edition; the Berlinale-premiering film follows a Coptic Christian security guard in downtown Cairo haunted by his father's murder by extremists.
Why it matters: El Gouna's ninth edition doubles as a proof-of-concept for CineGouna, its industry arm, with "The Return of Captain Kabonga" returning as a world premiere after picking up post-production awards there in 2025 and Mohammed Hammad's sophomore feature closing a circle that began at the festival's 2017 debut. The slate also positions the festival as an Arab-cinema aggregator on the international circuit, anchoring Palestine's 2027 Oscar entry ("Citizen Osama") alongside Shanghai and Berlin prize winners.
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