El Gouna Opens MENA Autumn Festival Season with Local Highlights, Oscar Contenders and Emerging Talent

The autumn 2026 festival season for the Middle East and North Africa kicks off today with the ninth El Gouna Film Festival. Held under the same name at the Red Sea resort of El Gouna in Egypt, the festival opens with the red-carpet premiere of the drama “Everything About Korin,” directed by French filmmaker Mark Fitoussi and starring Isabelle Huppert as an office employee.

The Middle East and North Africa Fall 2026 film festival season kicks off today with the 9th El Gona Film Festival.

Unfolding at Egypt's eponymous Red Sea resort of El Gouna, the festival kicks off with a red carpet screening of French director Marc Fitoussi's drama All About Corinne, starring Isabelle Hooper as a career actress who strikes up an unexpected friendship with a big movie star.

This edition is the first time that Andrew Mohsen, in the role of artistic director, replaces the respected distributor and exhibitor Marian Khoury, who left this position earlier this year. RELATED FESTIVAL STORIES 'All About Corinne' Review: Isabelle Huppert shines as a great film with bigger ambitions in delightful look at French film industry - Toronto Film Festival News Isabelle Huppert's comedy 'All About Corinne' sold to US ahead of North American release Toronto

Mohsen, who has been in the programming team since 2023 and previously worked at the Cairo Film Festival, is in his role. He explains that the team also has an eye on next year's edition, the festival's 10th edition, as it works on the 2026 lineup. Watch on Deadline

"We were working on two editions, the ninth and tenth, because next year will be a very important anniversary for the festival," he says. "We really asked ourselves, what is El Gona's identity? What makes El Gona special?"

A feather in El Gouna's status as the first major film festival in MENA is the region's autumn festival calendar, which will then continue with Cairo (November 11-20), Doha (November 19-27), Morocco (November 20-28) and Carthage in Tunisia (December 12-19). The sixth edition of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Film Festival was supposed to be held from December 3 to 12, but this year it has been suspended.

"We are the first major international film festival in the region in the last three months," he says. "Originally, the first three editions were in September. October gives us more time to get films from San Sebastian, Toronto and Venice ... and get a good insight into the films that are going to be campaigning for the Oscars as well."

El Gona will screen 49 feature films and 19 short films in fiction, documentary and short film competitions, as well as spin-offs from out-of-competition screenings and special screenings.

The competition will feature 13 films, from Mohammad Hammad's local drama Safe Exit, to buzzy regional titles such as Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi's Yesterday the Eye Didn't Sleep, and the festival's A-list winners and Oscar contenders Markus Schleinzer's Rose (FłatherwPolikowski) and Rose (Austria) (FłatherwPolikowski).

British director Joanna Hogg heads the jury, which includes Egyptian actor Nahid Al-Sabai (19B), Egyptian composer Khaled Hammad (The Yaqoubian Building), Iraqi Kurdish director Shawkat Amin Korki (The Exam) and Turkish director Yeshim Ostaoglu (What Remains).

Hammad's rival Mohsen describes Safe Exit, about a Cairo-based security guard dealing with the trauma of his parents' murder in religious and ethnic violence, as one of the "most important" films to come out of Egypt in recent years.

"It's a very bold film," he says. This film deals with something that we have never seen before in Egyptian cinema.

Thinking more generally about cinema outside the Middle East and North Africa region, he suggests that it has not been a great year in terms of the number of Arab-language films being produced.

"I feel the production has been affected," he says. I don't know if it's because of the war and what's going on in the region these days, or if it's cyclical."

In the wider program, a host of awards season hopefuls will be screened in the out-of-competition lineup, including Cannes Palme d'Or winner Cristian Mungiu's Fjord (Romania), Mustafa Halquat's It's Not Heaven If You're Killed by a Woman (Iraq) and Ryosuke Hamaguchi's (Once Upon a Time).

"This is the sixth time in nine editions that we have secured Mena's first Palme d'Or-winning show," says Mohsen.

Securing Arabic-language shows is a more competitive process, he says, as productions often promise MENA performances to festivals with ties to their funders.

Mohsen says he's not a fan of Mena's screening requirement, suggesting that given the region's incomplete exhibition infrastructure, films should have the opportunity to play as many festivals as possible.

The special lineup includes the documentary feature Dolphins: My Close Encounters, following Swiss marine biologist Angela Ziltner and her decades of dolphin research in the Red Sea. This is the first joint title in the new strategic partnership between El Gona and the Zurich Film Festival, Switzerland.

Beyond the film schedule, Mohsen suggests that playing El Gona in mid-October makes it a good meeting point for area professionals, and festival fatigue hasn't set in yet.

He points out how El Gouna's CineGouna industry program has gone from strength to strength to include five areas of investment, community, market, emerging and a new focus on series.

Ahmed Shawki, president of CineGouna Funding, El Gouna's co-production and development laboratory, says the industrial program is an important part of the festival's overall offer.

"This has been part of the festival's DNA since the beginning," he says, pointing to the festival's beach resort, which is far from the big urban centers. Now we have a very decent number of participants for the film program, but when it started, it was difficult to think of El Gona as just an audience-based festival.

"Bringing the industry in was a brilliant idea the founders had. It's also a good place for an industry event. The atmosphere is cool. People like to come. It's busier than Cannes or Berlin, and of course Egypt is the regional center of cinema."

“Over the years, Cinegouna has grown from just panels and a co-production platform to a market as well as an emerging talent program and this year, for the first time, a CineGouna series.

This year's Cinegouna Funding section hosts 19 projects, 13 films in development and 6 films in post-production, selected from among 300 submitted films.

Projects in development include Egyptian director Mohamed Siam's Waiting for Heaven, Lebanese filmmaker Noel Kaserwani's Printemps, and Abdullah al-Khatib's Pessimists, while films in post-production include Sofia Jama's Quarter to Thursday, which is in development with support from CineGouna.

In addition, the field has also launched two new initiatives, Voice of Egypt for local talent as well as MENA Safe Harbor, in partnership with International Feature Film Rotterdam.

The latter field, with the support of displaced directors, has invited Hadi Bakhit (Sudan) with the book "Searching for the memory of a lost homeland". Dismissal of Manay (Syria/Türkiye) with temporary protection; Ahmad Negumuddin (Sudan/Rwanda/Mauritania) with Sabri; and Yasser Faiz (Sudan/Kenya) with The Martyr’s Wedding.

Forum program highlights include a masterclass with this year's guest of honor, acting star Mona Zaki. A lecture on artificial intelligence led by Angus Feeney; A masterclass by Lincoln lawyer Black Sails and The Old Man director and cinematographer Lucas Etlin, as well as two deep dives into the late director Muhammad Khan's male and female characters and a panel on American Doctor featuring director Poe Si Teng.

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