EL GOUNA – Safe Exit, the second feature by Egyptian writer-director Mohammed Hammad, has won the Golden Star for narrative feature at the ninth El Gouna Film Festival. The prize, announced at the closing ceremony on Friday 23 October, carries $50,000, Egypt’s SEE News reported from the ceremony. All prize amounts in this story come from its report.
Key facts
- Golden Star, narrative feature: Safe Exit, Mohammed Hammad (Egypt), $50,000
- Silver Star: All the Lovers in the Night, Yukiko Sode ($25,000); Bronze Star: A Bit of Light, Ali Asgari
- Best Arab narrative feature: Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep, Rakan Mayasi ($20,000)
- Golden Star and best Arab documentary: Citizen Osama, Ahmed Hassouna
- Best actress: Rakeen Saad, Boomah; best actor: Jovan Ginić, 3 Weeks After
Safe Exit follows Samaan, a young Coptic security guard in Cairo whose parents were killed in religious violence when he was a child, and who is still living with the trauma in his early twenties. It had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in February and was the only Egyptian title in El Gouna’s feature competition, where it had its Middle East premiere. Marwan Waleed, Noha Foad and Hazem Essam star.
The jury described it as a heartfelt account of how grief and psychological trauma pass from one generation to the next, and praised its restraint, according to Cairo’s CAI Edit. No Egyptian release date has been set, and the Cairo International Film Festival, which runs 11–20 November, had not announced its full programme.
Hammad produced the film with Kholoud Saad through Pareidolia Productions, the Cairo company the two set up to make self-funded independent films. Dora Bouchoucha’s Nomadis Images in Tunisia, Dina Farouk’s Wika Productions and Ibrahim El Batout are co-producers, and the film is an Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian, Qatari and German co-production. MAD World handles international sales, with sister company MAD Distribution releasing it in the Arab world. In Berlin the film had seven Panorama screenings, and it was Egypt’s second Berlinale title in two years, MAD World said at the time.
Hammad studied mass communication at Helwan University and made his first short, The Fifth Pound, in 2006. His first feature, Withered Green, competed at Locarno and won him best director at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2016; it also took best director for a first work at Egypt’s National Film Festival in Cairo. MAD World said that film’s success was why it signed Safe Exit.
The rest of the awards
In the narrative competition, Yukiko Sode’s All the Lovers in the Night took the Silver Star ($25,000) and Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light the Bronze. Rakan Mayasi’s best Arab feature, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep, is set in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Jordan’s Rakeen Saad won her prize for Zaid Abu Hamdan’s Boomah, and Jovan Ginić his for Miroslav Terzić’s 3 Weeks After.
In the documentary competition, Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama, about a Gaza photojournalist balancing work and family during the war, took both the Golden Star and the prize for best Arab documentary. The Golden Star carries $30,000. Hassouna is still in Gaza, Variety noted. Dongnan Chen’s Whispers in May won the Silver Star and Raha Shirazi’s A War on Women the Bronze.
Anders Davidsen’s Stolen Memories, in which an 18-year-old questions his past after finding childhood photographs, won the Golden Star for short film ($15,000), ahead of Roddy Dextre’s Nobody Knows the World, and Marie-Rose Osta’s Someday a Child was named best Arab short. Moroccan director Yassine Idrissi’s Halima received a special mention in the feature competition.
Poh Si Teng’s American Doctor took the $20,000 Cinema for Humanity audience award, and Nuisance Bear, by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, won the $10,000 Green Star for a film with an environmental focus. Moroccan filmmaker Faouzi Bensaïdi received the festival’s Creative Achievement Award.
El Gouna’s CineGouna industry platform gave more than $350,000 across 40 awards to 19 projects, chosen from more than 320 applications, and participants held more than 140 one-to-one meetings, Variety reported. This year it added Egyptian Voices, a development programme for local filmmakers, and a first Series lab for Arab television, led by screenwriter Mariam Naoum, which brought six projects to pitch. With International Film Festival Rotterdam and IEFTA, the festival also launched Safe Harbour MENA for four filmmakers displaced within the region, and a Cinema on Wheels tour is taking three of this year’s shorts to six Egyptian cities, from Hurghada to Aswan.
CineGouna’s awards sit alongside other project money FilmBunch has followed this autumn: the Red Sea Fund backed 30 projects from 916 submissions, Durban FilmMart added animation and natural history strands and Hamburg’s work-in-progress prizes pay for finishing costs.
Sources
- El Gouna Film Festival, award winners
- SEE News (Sada Elbalad English), 23 October 2026 (prize amounts, ceremony)
- Variety, 24 October 2026
- Berlinale, Safe Exit programme page
- MAD World, 11 February 2026
- Deadline, 14 January 2026
- CAI Edit, 25 October 2026 (jury citation, Egyptian release)
- CAI Edit, 14 October 2026