Cairo International Film Festival: A Global Conversation at 50
The 47th Cairo International Film Festival promises to be a particularly significant edition, combining an ambitious international competition with a strong representation of Arab cinema and a Critics’ Week programme designed to bring emerging filmmakers to wider attention. Running from 11 to 20 November, the festival also celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in 1976, reaffirming Cairo’s position as one of the most important meeting points for cinemas across Africa and the Arab world.
With 145 films from 64 countries, the programme offers a remarkably broad view of contemporary filmmaking. Its 12-film International Competition is particularly European in its co-production profile, yet its geographical reach extends from Iran and Japan to Costa Rica and the Arab world. The emphasis, according to artistic director Mohamed Tarek, is on new generations of filmmakers and the audiences they hope to engage.
The International Competition: twelve films, twelve perspectives
The competition for the coveted Golden Pyramid brings together established festival discoveries and filmmakers whose work deserves greater international attention.
Among the most intriguing selections is Strawberries, directed by Laïla Marrakchi, a French-Moroccan filmmaker whose work frequently explores the complexities of identity, class and contemporary Moroccan society. Its selection reinforces the importance of cross-cultural storytelling within the programme.
Also attracting attention is Words of Love, the latest film from French director Rudi Rosenberg, alongside The Green Eyes, directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh. Both films have connections to the wider European festival circuit, illustrating Cairo’s continuing dialogue with the discoveries of Cannes and other major international festivals.
Austria and Germany are represented by Adrian Goiginger’s Four Minus Three, a drama centred on Barbara, a professional clown whose life is transformed by the loss of her family in a car accident. Its premise suggests a difficult balance between grief and the persistence of hope, offering a potentially powerful examination of how people survive personal catastrophe.
Another European production with a charged historical backdrop is Heysel 85, directed by Teodora Ana Mihai. The film evokes the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985, an event whose human consequences and place in European football history remain deeply resonant.
The Lebanese-French-Qatari production In This Darkness I See You, directed by Nadim Tabet, brings a Levantine perspective to the competition. Its presence is particularly welcome in a festival whose geographical position gives it a natural role in connecting Arab filmmakers with international audiences.
The Iranian film The Legacy, directed by Morteza Alizadeh, adds another perspective from a national cinema with a distinguished history of social observation and formal invention. Meanwhile, Japan is represented by Kazuya Murayama’s The Ballet Lesson, demonstrating the competition’s reach beyond its predominantly European co-production landscape.
The remaining titles further underline this international range: Al Baraneya, directed by Ashgan El-Hamus; BerleeN, directed by Ahmad Abdalla; Love Is the Monster, directed by Neto Villalobos Brenes; and Yugo Goes to America, directed by Filip Grujić and Aleksa Borković.
Together, these twelve films create a competition that moves between intimate family drama, historical memory, questions of identity and the uncertainties of contemporary life. The eventual winner will be competing not simply against individual films, but against markedly different cinematic traditions and cultural experiences.
The 47th Cairo International Film Festival, 11–20 November 2026