El Gouna Opens MENA Fall Season as Red Sea Fest Shelved — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- El Gouna Film Festival opened its 9th edition today in Egypt's Red Sea resort, screening 49 features and 19 shorts and positioning itself as the first major MENA festival of the fall season ahead of Cairo (Nov 11-20), Doha (Nov 19-27), Marrakech (Nov 20-28) and Tunisia's Carthage (Dec 12-19).
- Andrew Mohsen began his first edition as artistic director, replacing Marianne Khoury, and said the team is already planning the festival's 10th-anniversary edition alongside the current one.
- Mohsen flagged that Arab-language production appears to be down this year, suggesting regional war or cyclical factors may be throttling output, while securing the MENA premiere of a Cannes Palme d'Or winner for the sixth time in nine editions (Cristian Mungiu's Fjord).
- The competition includes Egyptian drama Safe Exit by Mohammed Hammad — which Mohsen called one of the most important Egyptian films in recent years — alongside Rakan Mayasi's Yesterday the Eye Didn't Sleep and Oscar contenders Rose (Austria's Markus Schleinzer) and Fatherland (Poland's Paweł Pawlikowski).
- Joanna Hogg was named jury president, joined by Nahed El Sebaie, Khaled Hammad, Iraqi-Kurdish director Shawkat Amin Korki and Turkish director Yeşim Ustaoğlu.
- Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Film Festival was shelved this year; its sixth edition had been scheduled for December 3-12, removing a key competitor from the regional calendar.
- CineGouna Funding will host 19 projects selected from 300 submissions and launched a new Safe Harbour MENA strand with Rotterdam's IFFR to back displaced directors from Sudan, Syria and elsewhere.
Why it matters: The shelving of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Film Festival consolidates regional industry attention on El Gouna, whose October slot now precedes every other major MENA gathering. Mohsen's candor that Arab-language production is flagging — possibly tied to the regional war — hints at a thinner pipeline ahead, while the new Safe Harbour MENA strand formalizes support for displaced filmmakers from Sudan and Syria.
Ask SkimNews
