Al Baraneya, the debut feature of the Dutch-Egyptian director Ashgan El-Hamus, has won the Amore e Psiche prize for best film at the 32nd MedFilm Festival in Rome. The award, worth €2,000, was presented at the festival’s ceremony at The Space Cinema Moderno on Wednesday 11 November. The film also took the best feature prize from the festival’s university jury.
MedFilm, the longest-running film festival in Rome, is devoted to the cinemas of the Mediterranean. This year it screened 67 films from 33 countries, and its eight-film official competition opened to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. The winners’ credits also show where Arab-world auteur films now find their money. Three of the winning features, Al Baraneya, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Route Algéricaine and Malek Bensmaïl’s L’Arabe, list Saudi Arabia among their co-producing countries, and two, Route Algéricaine and Danielle Arbid’s Seuls les rebelles, list Qatar.
Key facts
- Best film: Al Baraneya by Ashgan El-Hamus (Netherlands, Egypt, Belgium, Saudi Arabia), €2,000, plus the university jury’s best feature prize
- Special jury prize: Route Algéricaine by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, €1,000
- Double winner: Malek Bensmaïl’s L’Arabe took the best Euro-Mediterranean co-production award (€2,000) and the Piuculture prize
- Industry: Alassane Sy’s Fighters (France, Senegal) won the €10,000 OIM prize in the MedFilm Works in Progress
- Lifetime achievement: the Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi
The winning film
Al Baraneya follows Amal, a pregnant woman living with her extended family in a village of jasmine fields outside Cairo, whose household splits when a landowner offers to buy its land. El-Hamus cast members of her own Egyptian family alongside Reem Amer, the only professional actor in the film, according to its sales agent. She wrote the script with Roelof-Jan Minneboo.
The film was produced by Frank Hoeve for the Amsterdam company BALDR Film, with Kesmat Elsayed of Seera Films and Eurydice Gysel of CZAR Film as co-producers. Its backers include the Netherlands Film Fund, the Belgian Tax Shelter, Creative Europe MEDIA and the Red Sea Fund. It premiered in the Giornate degli Autori at Venice in September. MAD World, the sales arm of the Cairo-based Mad Solutions, handles world sales.
The Rome win lands in the busiest weeks of the Arab-world festival season. The Cairo International Film Festival opened on 11 November, and Al Baraneya is also in the 11th Continent section of the Marrakech International Film Festival, which runs from 20 to 28 November. Before that, MedFilm will stream it in Italy on MYmovies ONE between 14 and 16 November.
Full list of 2026 winners
Official competition (jury: Pedro Armocida, Simona Cives, Federica Lucisano, Francesca Marciano, Miriam Mauti) – Amore e Psiche prize for best film (€2,000): Al Baraneya, Ashgan El-Hamus (Netherlands, Egypt, Belgium, Saudi Arabia) – Special jury prize (€1,000): Route Algéricaine, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (France, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) – Artistic expression prize: Soumsoum, la nuit des astres, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (France, Chad)
Valentina Pedicini prize for first and second films (jury: Irene Dionisio, Fabio Falzone, Dalal Suleiman) – Best film (€1,000): Citizen Osama, Ahmed Hassouna (Palestine, France) – Special mention: Les yeux verts, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (France, Belgium, Sweden)
International short film competition (jury of film students from the Methexis project and 11 inmates of four Rebibbia prisons in Rome) – Methexis prize for best short (€1,000): Paradise Garden (Les jardins du paradis), Sonia Terrab (Morocco, France) – Cervantes Roma prize for the most innovative short: Besieged, Kiarash Ardeshirpour (Iran)
Best Euro-Mediterranean co-production, with the European Commission’s representation in Italy (jury: Fabio Ferzetti, Mario Mazzarotto, Massimo Pronio) – Best co-production (€2,000): L’Arabe, Malek Bensmaïl (Algeria, France, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Belgium) – Special mention: L’Estive, Naël Khleifi and Lisa Debauche (Belgium, France)
Ecumenical prize, with the Institut Français Centre Saint-Louis (jury: Michel Kubler, Mary Lembo, Alexey Vozniuk) – Best film (€1,500): Seuls les rebelles, Danielle Arbid (France, Lebanon, Qatar)
MedMeetings industry prizes (Works in Progress jury: Carlo Cresto-Dina, Marta Donzelli, Fabio Tucci; the MedPitching prize is voted by the participating professionals) – OIM prize, MedFilm Works in Progress (€10,000): Fighters, Alassane Sy (France, Senegal), produced by Jules Dieng – Stadion Video prize, a DCP with English subtitles worth €3,500: A More Beautiful Life, Filippo Maria Gori (Italy), produced by Giulia Campagna – MedPitching prize (€1,000): The Boy Who Spoke Static, The Agbajowo Collective (Nigeria), produced by Matthew Cerf
Other awards – Amnesty International human rights prize: Les yeux verts, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh – WWF MedFilm Award (€1,000, shared; jury: Fabio Ferri, Isabella Pratesi, Ricky Tognazzi): Cosa rimane quando il mare si muove, Gaetano Crivaro (Italy), and Khufu, Mahmoud Assi (Egypt, France, Sweden, Canada) – Piuculture prize: L’Arabe, Malek Bensmaïl – University jury (students from Rome universities), best feature: Al Baraneya, Ashgan El-Hamus – University jury, best short: What Do The Maknines Dream Of (À quoi rêvent les maknines), Sarra Ryma (Algeria, France) – “[S]guardare il Mediterraneo” prize, from the Acting News jury: Cosa rimane quando il mare si muove, Gaetano Crivaro
Honours: a lifetime achievement award to Rashid Masharawi, and tributes to Mohammad Bakri and Tony Gatlif.
The festival opened on 5 November and holds its last screenings and talks on 13 and 14 November at the Teatro Palladium and the Archivio Flamigni. FilmBunch covered the line-up when it was announced; our other festival award lists are collected on one page.
Our reading
MedFilm’s prize money is modest. What Al Baraneya gains is a second European platform after Venice, just as its sales agent takes it to Marrakech and to buyers in the Arab world and Europe. The larger signal is in the financing credits. Saudi Arabia appears on three of the winning features and Qatar on two, alongside the Netherlands Film Fund, Belgian tax shelter money and Creative Europe on Al Baraneya alone. For producers putting together Arab-world auteur projects, a Gulf partner next to European public money is now a common structure among the films that win in Rome. The next test for Al Baraneya is commercial: the territory sales that follow Marrakech.
Sources
- MedFilm Festival 2026 awards release with the full list of winners and juries, as published by Cinecittà News, 12 November 2026 (Italian)
- MAD World, Al Baraneya catalogue page (production, sales, stills)
- MAD World, Ashgan El-Hamus’s debut feature premieres at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival (4 September 2026)
- Giornate degli Autori, Al Baraneya programme page (credits, funders)
- Deadline, Mad World boards sales on Venice-bound Egyptian drama Al Baraneya (10 August 2026)
- Marrakech International Film Festival, official selection release (2 November 2026)