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Cairo International Film Festival opens 11 November with I Play Rocky and 145 films

Nabil Ayouch presides over the jury for the 12-film Golden Pyramid competition and receives a lifetime award.

By 16 min read
The illuminated Cairo Opera House and its forecourt at dusk, venue of the Cairo International Film Festival

The Cairo Opera House at dusk. The festival is headquartered at the Opera House, where its 47th edition runs from 11 to 20 November 2026. Used as a venue image because no cleared festival still was available to us. Photo: لا روسا / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The 47th Cairo International Film Festival opens on Wednesday 11 November with Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky and runs to 20 November at the Cairo Opera House, with 145 films from 64 countries, according to the figures the festival gave at its press conference on 11 October. They include 17 world premieres, five international premieres and 87 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) premieres, and 12 films in the International Competition for the Golden Pyramid. The festival, accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), is marking 50 years since its first edition in 1976.

Key facts

  • Dates and venues: 11–20 November 2026; Cairo Opera House plus cinemas across the city; president Hussein Fahmy, artistic director Mohamed Tarek
  • Opening: I Play Rocky (Peter Farrelly, USA, 128 min), Out of Competition; closing ceremony on 20 November at 18:00 in the Opera House Main Hall
  • Numbers: 145 films, 64 countries, 17 world, five international and 87 MENA premieres; about 5,600 submissions
  • Golden Pyramid: 12 films in competition under jury president Nabil Ayouch, who also receives a Golden Pyramid lifetime award
  • Honours: Matteo Garrone, Abderrahmane Sissako, Saeed Shimi and Medhat El Adl; Faten Hamama Excellence Award to Asser Yassin

This report works from the festival’s own section lists of 11 October, as republished by Sat Lights and Alikhbaria Attounisia, and checks them against Cineuropa, SEE News, Daily News Egypt, CairoScene and The New Arab. The festival’s programme page still read “will be announced soon” when we looked on Friday 6 November, and each of the October lists was framed as titles “announced to date”. The full selection is at the end; the sections before it cover who runs the festival, who judges it, who is honoured and where the business happens.

Dates, venues and leadership

Hussein Fahmy, the actor, is festival president. The festival’s list of presidents shows he also held the post from 1998 to 2001. Mohamed Tarek, an Egyptian critic and programmer who also works as lead programmer at Cinema Akil, is artistic director, according to the festival’s team page. Mohamed Sayed Abdel Rahim runs Cairo Industry Days, Daily News Egypt reported.

The Opera House venues are the Main Hall, Small Hall, Hanager Theatre, Hanager Cinema and Creativity Center. The festival added Tahrir and Zawya cinemas at the October press conference, and the full list also takes in Zamalek Cinema, Ewart Hall at the American University in Cairo, and VOX Cinemas at Mall of Egypt and City Centre Almaza, according to the festival’s venue announcement. The Opera House’s own calendar puts the closing ceremony on 20 November at 18:00 in the Main Hall.

The numbers come with a counting problem. The festival’s breakdown gives 109 feature-length films, 29 shorts and 17 documentaries, plus a Cairo XR programme of extended-reality works, against a headline of 145. Those parts add up to 155 if the documentaries are counted separately. By our arithmetic the documentaries sit inside the 109, and 109 plus 29 plus the seven XR works makes 145. Artistic director Tarek said the team reviewed about 5,600 submissions, made up of 2,100 features and 3,500 shorts, The Master Scene reported.

The opening film and the competition

I Play Rocky tells how Sylvester Stallone fought to write and star in the 1976 Rocky, the year Cairo’s festival began. Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone, with Matt Dillon, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, Tracey Letts and Jay Duplass in the cast, and Amazon MGM and United Motion Pictures handle distribution, the festival said when it named the film on 28 October. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where the festival says it finished as first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award, and has since played Vancouver, BFI London and AFI Fest. It sits Out of Competition, alongside Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, which opened Thessaloniki, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back and Sheep in the Box, and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved.

Peter Farrelly in a blue suit in front of a Toronto International Film Festival backdrop, at the premiere of I Play Rocky
Peter Farrelly, director of the opening film I Play Rocky (2026), at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2026. Photo: Gabriel Hutchinson / CC BY-SA 4.0

The International Competition has 12 features. Cineuropa counted nine as European productions or co-productions, and noted that Strawberries and Words of Love played Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Four Minus Three played Berlin and The Green Eyes played Locarno. Tourismag reports two world premieres, Ahmad Abdalla’s BerleeN_ and Morteza Alizadeh’s Inherited, and ten MENA premieres. BerleeN_, an Egyptian–German film, follows three Arab strangers through a day in Berlin. Inherited is a Persian-language drama about a woman on death row who learns that pregnancy is the only way to delay her execution. Two competition films are Egyptian: BerleeN_ and Ashgan El-Hamus’s Al Baraneya, about a pregnant young woman whose family is offered money for its land in a village outside Cairo.

Nadim Tabet’s In This Darkness I See You, set among Syrian workers and Lebanese villagers, had its world premiere at Beyond Fest in the US and won two awards through Venice’s Final Cut programme, according to MAD Solutions, which brings it and Al Baraneya to Cairo for their MENA premieres. The New Arab calls Strawberries, Laïla Marrakchi’s film about Moroccan seasonal workers in southern Spain, this year’s Moroccan Oscar candidate. Yugo Goes to America is the competition’s one documentary; SEE News describes it as the closing film, though we have not found a festival statement that names one.

The festival’s regulations page still carries the text for the 46th edition, which set the Golden Pyramid for best film at $7,000, the Silver Pyramid for best director at $5,000, the Bronze Pyramid special jury award at $3,000, the Youssef Chahine award for best short at $2,000 and the Best Arab Film award at $10,000. Rules for the 47th edition were not posted, so these amounts may change. Last year’s Golden Pyramid, listed on the festival’s home page, went to Paul Andrew Williams’s Dragon Fly.

Juries

Nabil Ayouch, the French-Moroccan director of Ali Zaoua and Everybody Loves Touda, presides over the International Competition jury. The festival’s release names Ameer Fakher Eldin, Paul Davies, Fan Bingbing and Laura Wandel as members. SEE News, Daily News Egypt and CAI Edit also list Egyptian actress Ghada Adel, which would make six. Fakher Eldin is a Syrian-German director, Davies a British sound designer, Fan an actress and producer, and Wandel a Belgian director.

The other panels, from the festival’s releases unless stated:

  • Best Arab Film Award: Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director, presides, with Egyptian director Amal Ramsis and Jordanian producer and editor Laith Majali
  • Horizons of Arab Cinema: Amr Salama, Laila Abbas and Tudor Vladimir Panduru, according to The New Arab
  • International Critics’ Week: cinematographer Frida Marzouk and editor Heba Othman so far, with the rest to be announced
  • Short Film Competition: Hasan Hadi, Stefanie Kolk and Aly Kassem
  • Best Feature Documentary: Viola Shafik, Karol Piekarczyk of Millennium Docs Against Gravity and Qutaiba Barhamji, according to Tourismag and Cairo24
  • FIPRESCI: critics Marcelo Janot, Arwa Tag El Din and Susanne Cornelia Gietl

Honours and tributes

Yabiladi reported on 30 October, citing a festival press release, that Ayouch will receive the Golden Pyramid Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement at the opening ceremony on 11 November, the first Moroccan to do so. He therefore both judges the competition and is honoured on its first night. The same award goes to Matteo Garrone, Abderrahmane Sissako, the cinematographer Saeed Shimi and the screenwriter and lyricist Medhat El Adl, according to Cineuropa and Tourismag. Actor Asser Yassin receives the Faten Hamama Excellence Award, and Daily News Egypt reported a special tribute to the film distributor Antoine Zind. Garrone, Sissako, Shimi, El Adl, Óliver Laxe and Davies are listed for masterclasses.

Industry and talent programmes

Cairo Industry Days includes the Cairo Film Market, held on 14–19 November at the Sofitel Cairo Downtown Nile. The market’s own page promises more than 50 broadcast buyers from France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Belgium and Spain, plus buyers from the Gulf, Africa and Asia. These are the market’s promotional figures, not confirmed attendance. The festival site’s Cairo Film Connection page, for its co-production platform, listed no editions or projects on 6 November.

Two programmes are new, Abdel Rahim said: From Book to Screen, which aims to bring Egyptian publishers and producers together on adaptations of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Ihsan Abdel Quddous, and a project and filmmaker development track. Two workshops will develop short series in thriller, suspense and horror. New Wave, the festival’s talent programme in its second year with the Drosos Foundation and the British Council, drew more than 850 applications and picked 100 participants, 70 of them from outside Cairo, according to the festival. Cairo Kids, a children’s section, is new this year with nine films, and Cairo XR is in its second edition.

AI rules and a disputed poster

Two questions over artificial intelligence affect how the festival is read. Fahmy said AI-made films will not compete for awards, Daily News Egypt reported, and Tarek said such works were not selected because the festival has no mechanism to assess them. The official poster, which carries a depiction of the actress Shadia, drew criticism over the likeness and over whether AI was used. SEE News quoted Fahmy at the press conference as saying the poster “does contain artificial intelligence”, while Daily News Egypt reported Tarek questioning whether those asserting this had seen the production process. SEE News also reported, citing Egyptian outlets and an unnamed festival source, that the poster would be revised; we have not seen the festival confirm that.

Egypt, the region and what is not yet known

CairoScene counts 12 Egyptian films in the programme. In the festival’s lists, Egypt is behind BerleeN_ and Al Baraneya in competition, Sara Shazli’s Your Daughter in Horizons, Nehal El Koussi’s The Lookalike in Special Screenings, four titles in the Short Film Competition (Winter Time, One Second, White Dot and The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with My Father), five world-premiere shorts in the Egyptian Short Film Panorama and all 27 restored classics. For regional context, see our report on El Gouna’s Golden Star for Safe Exit and our line-ups for Marrakech and MedFilm in Rome. Viva Carmen, in Cairo’s International Panorama, opened Seville’s European festival.

Two items came after the October lists. MBC Studios said the Saudi thriller Traveller’s Hell, by Hana Allomair, has its world premiere on 13 November in Midnight Screenings. BroadcastPro ME reported a special screening of Home Bitter Home, a collaborative film by six Lebanese directors that premiered at Rotterdam, which is not in the October Special Screenings list. Mobtada’s Arabic list for the documentary award adds John Wilson’s US documentary The History of Concrete, which does not appear in the festival lists we found. We found no published screening schedule or ticket prices.

Full official selection

The lists below follow the festival’s section releases of 11 October: title, director or directors and countries of production. Where a title differs between sources we use the festival’s form, with the sales title where one exists: the festival’s first list calls Alizadeh’s film The Legacy, while Cineuropa and Madakto Pictures’ own page call it Inherited. In This Darkness I See You is the film’s own title; some outlets print “In the Darkness”. The Cairo Kids entries come from the Arabic announcement published by Al-Ahram Gate, and the English titles of its six shorts are matched by us to the directors, countries and running times it gives. The Egyptian panorama titles are from CairoScene. In total the lists below name 144 entries: 102 features, 35 shorts and seven XR works. The festival’s 145 and its 109-feature figure cannot be reconciled with them, and Home Bitter Home and The History of Concrete are outside the count.

Opening and closing events

  • Opening film: I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly (USA), 11 November
  • Closing ceremony: 20 November, 18:00, Cairo Opera House Main Hall

International Competition (12)

  • Al Baraneya, Ashgan El-Hamus (Netherlands/Egypt/Belgium/Saudi Arabia)
  • BerleeN_, Ahmad Abdalla (Germany/Egypt)
  • Four Minus Three, Adrian Goiginger (Austria/Germany)
  • Heysel 85, Teodora Ana Mihai (Belgium/Netherlands/Germany)
  • In This Darkness I See You, Nadim Tabet (France/Lebanon/Qatar)
  • Inherited (Madarzad), Morteza Alizadeh (Iran)
  • Love Is the Monster, Neto Villalobos Brenes (Costa Rica/Peru/Panama/Chile/Mexico)
  • Strawberries, Laïla Marrakchi (France/Spain/Morocco/Belgium)
  • The Ballet Lesson, Kazuya Murayama (Japan)
  • The Green Eyes, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (France/Belgium/Sweden)
  • Words of Love, Rudi Rosenberg (France)
  • Yugo Goes to America, Filip Grujić and Aleksa Borković (Serbia/Croatia)

Horizons of Arab Cinema Competition (7)

  • Al Baseer – The Blind Ferryman, Ali Tofan Al-Fatlawi (Switzerland/Iraq/Qatar)
  • Magma, Mia Bendrimia (Algeria/France/Qatar)
  • Summer Meadow, Naël Khleifi and Lisa Debauche (Belgium/France)
  • The Day of Wrath: Tales from Tripoli, Rania Rafei (Lebanon/Saudi Arabia/Qatar)
  • To the Sun and Beyond, Azyz Chennaoui (Tunisia/Saudi Arabia)
  • Until Dawn, Mohamed Zineddaine (Morocco/Italy)
  • Your Daughter, Sara Shazli (Egypt/Belgium)

International Critics’ Week Competition (6)

  • Before the Sun Rises in the West, Azamat Shargyn (Kazakhstan)
  • Dancing Angels, Ferit Kılıç (Turkey/Croatia)
  • Nuclear Boy, Joren Molter (Netherlands)
  • The Blind Girl and an Elephant, Ishtiyak Ahmad Zihad (Bangladesh/Germany)
  • The Red Hangar, Juan Pablo Sallato (Chile/Argentina/Italy)
  • The River Train, Lorenzo Ferro and Lucas A. Vignale (Argentina)

Short Film Competition (24)

  • A Tenderness, Sabrine Khoury (Palestine/Netherlands)
  • An Impossible Word of Praise, Arturo Spano (Argentina/Italy)
  • Case No., Patrycja Polkowska (Poland)
  • Cul-de-Sac!, Clyde Gates and Gabriel Sanson (Belgium/France)
  • How to Catch a Butterfly, Kiriko Mechanicus (Netherlands)
  • Imichki, Yza Nouiga (Canada/Morocco)
  • Lovely Butterfly, Fairouz Hasan (Palestine)
  • Madrugada, Sebastián Lojo (UK/Turkey/Guatemala)
  • My First Day of Summer (Angelo Azzurro), Tommaso Acquarone (Italy)
  • Winter Time, Zeina Ramy (Egypt)
  • Our Secrets, Lenti Liang (USA/China)
  • Penguin, Kaspar Jancis (Estonia)
  • Prisoner of Love, Yumna Marwan (Lebanon/USA)
  • Sisters’ Swim, Lola Degove (France)
  • Stretcher, Thibault Fauconnet (France)
  • The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with My Father, Sameh Alaa and Robin Vouters (France/Belgium/Egypt)
  • The Liars, Eduardo Braun Costa (Argentina)
  • Trance, Jona Schloßer (Germany)
  • Uncle Filmi, Nazgol Kashani (Germany)
  • We Were Here, Pranav Bhasin (India)
  • One Second, Nadine El Banhawy (Egypt/France)
  • Birdie, Praise Odigie Paige (Nigeria)
  • 8 Walls 2 Doors, Miaochun Zhang (USA/China)
  • White Dot, Amr Abed (Egypt/Spain)

Egyptian Short Film Panorama (5)

  • A Date with Mama, Marianne Hanna and Christine Hanna (Egypt)
  • A Short Ride, Mohamed Sakr (Egypt)
  • A Holiday in Teplice, Bishoy Qalada (Egypt)
  • Siberen, Eman El Toukhy (Egypt)
  • Thank You, Bye, I Love You, Zeina Blasi (Egypt)

Official Selection, Out of Competition (17)

  • Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, Giuseppe Tornatore (Italy)
  • Donkey Princess, Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña (Chile/France/Uruguay/Netherlands/Germany)
  • Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer (Austria/Germany/France/Sweden)
  • I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly (USA): opening film
  • Les Misérables, Fred Cavayé (France/Belgium)
  • Look Back, Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan)
  • Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev (France/UK/Latvia)
  • Nina Roza, Geneviève Dulude-De Celles (Canada/Italy/Bulgaria/Belgium)
  • Only Beautiful Things to Look At, Ivan Ostrochovský (Slovakia/Czech Republic/Hungary)
  • Salvation, Emin Alper (Turkey/France/Netherlands/Greece/Sweden/Saudi Arabia)
  • Sheep in the Box, Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan)
  • Sister Brother Manhole Cover, Milcho Manchevski (North Macedonia/Bulgaria/Serbia/Albania/UK/Italy)
  • Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (France/Chad)
  • The Beloved, Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Spain/France)
  • Diary of a Chambermaid, Radu Jude (France/Romania)
  • The Dreamed Adventure, Valeska Grisebach (Germany)
  • The Loneliest Man in Town, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel (Austria)

International Panorama (13)

  • Dead Dogs Don’t Bite, Nuri Cihan Özdoğan (Turkey)
  • Enjoy Your Stay, Dominik Locher (Switzerland/France/Philippines)
  • Low Expectations, Eivind Landsvik (Denmark/Norway)
  • Motherwitch, Minos Papas (Cyprus/North Macedonia/USA)
  • No Good Men, Shahrbanoo Sadat (Germany/France/Norway/Denmark/Afghanistan)
  • Salvation, Tom Nicoll (UK): a different film from Emin Alper’s Salvation above
  • Shame and Money, Visar Morina (Germany/Kosovo/Slovenia/Albania/North Macedonia/Belgium)
  • The Clearing, Sabine Groenewegen (Netherlands/Indonesia)
  • The Big Family, Matías Meyer (Mexico/Italy)
  • Tiger Is Coming, Chao Fan (China)
  • What Leads Us to You (Ce qui nous mène à toi), Khalil Cherti (France)
  • Viva Carmen, Sébastien Laudenbach (France)
  • Butterfly Jam, Kantemir Balagov (France/Germany/Belgium)

Special Screenings (11)

  • Deleau: Cinema Unchained, Michel La Veaux (Canada)
  • For Life, Ahmet Seven (Turkey/Palestine)
  • Homesick, Taekyung Tanja In Wol Sørensen (Denmark)
  • LOUF, Aziz Zoromba (Canada)
  • Making Marie Antoinette, Eleanor Coppola (USA)
  • Nipster, Sunniva Eir Tangvik Kveum (Sweden)
  • Sevda, Ufuk Emiroglu (Switzerland/Belgium/Turkey)
  • The Huntress, Suzanne Andrews Correa (Mexico/USA)
  • The Lion at My Back, Tonia Mishiali (Cyprus/Luxembourg/Greece)
  • The Lookalike (Al Shabih), Nehal El Koussi (Egypt)
  • Vittorio De Sica: Staging Life, Francesco Zippel (Italy)

Midnight Screenings (4)

  • Drumskin, Joaquín Cambre (Argentina)
  • Mi Amor, Guillaume Nicloux (France)
  • The Birthday Party, Léa Mysius (France)
  • Traveller’s Hell, Hana Allomair (Saudi Arabia)

Midnight Classics (2)

  • Cat People, Jacques Tourneur (USA, 1942)
  • Lost Highway, David Lynch (France/USA, 1997)

Restored Egyptian Classics (27)

  • A Crime in a Quiet Neighborhood, Hossam El Din Mostafa (1967)
  • A Woman on the Road, Ezz El-Dine Zulficar (1958)
  • Cairo 30, Salah Abu Seif (1966)
  • Khan al-Khalili, Atef Salem (1966)
  • My Wife and the Dog, Said Marzouk (1971)
  • My Wife, the General Manager, Fatin Abdel Wahab (1966)
  • Night and Jail Bars, Ashraf Fahmy (1973)
  • Palace of Desire, Hassan El Imam (1967)
  • Palace Walk, Hassan El Imam (1964)
  • Something of Fear, Hussein Kamal (1969)
  • Sunset and Sunrise, Kamal El Sheikh (1970)
  • The Beggar, Hossam El Din Mostafa (1973)
  • The Impossible, Hussein Kamal (1965)
  • The Killers, Ashraf Fahmy (1971)
  • The Lamp of Umm Hashim, Kamal Attia (1968)
  • The Man Who Lost His Shadow, Kamal El Sheikh (1968)
  • The Mirage, Anwar El-Shenawy (1970)
  • The People and the Nile, Youssef Chahine (1972)
  • The Quail and Autumn, Hossam El Din Mostafa (1967)
  • The Road, Hossam El Din Mostafa (1964)
  • The Second Wife, Salah Abu Seif (1967)
  • The Sin, Henry Barakat (1965)
  • The Rebels, Tawfik Saleh (1968)
  • Shafiqa the Coptic, Hassan El Imam (1963)
  • The Enchanting Star, Helmy Rafla (1967)
  • The Postman, Hussein Kamal (1968)
  • We’re the Students, Atef Salem (1959)

Cairo Kids: features (3)

  • Incinerator, Shuntaro Uchida (Japan)
  • The Violinist, Ervin Han and Raúl García (Spain/Italy/Singapore/Japan/Canada/Colombia)
  • Not a Hero, Rima Das (India/Singapore)

Cairo Kids: shorts (6)

  • Actus, Medina Yelikbayeva (Kazakhstan)
  • Social Phobia, Malek Hbiri (Tunisia)
  • Cartoon Physics, Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter (France/Netherlands/Switzerland)
  • Lollipop, Riyaaz Roy (Germany)
  • Azuki, Astrid Rothaug (Austria)
  • Pickled, Fanny Capu (UK)

Cairo’s XR (7)

  • Artou, Abderrahmane Sissako (France)
  • Buried Memories: 8 Montazah Street, UBR Studio (Egypt)
  • Human Identity, Mohamed El Araby (Egypt)
  • Impulse: Playing with Reality, Anagram (UK)
  • Murmuration, Patricia Bergeron (Canada)
  • Journey to the Moon, Daniela Weiss (Austria)
  • Solwata, Gayatri Parameswaran and Felix Gaedtke (USA/Germany)

Added after the October lists

  • Home Bitter Home, six Lebanese directors: special screening
  • Traveller’s Hell, Hana Allomair: world premiere on 13 November, already listed under Midnight Screenings

Our reading

Cairo is selling a programme built largely from titles that have already earned a label elsewhere. A Cannes section, Berlin, Locarno, Venice’s Final Cut and a Toronto opener give the competition and the Out of Competition strand a recognisable spine, while only two competition films are world premieres. For sales agents, the 87 MENA premieres are worth most where a regional deal is still open, and the Cairo Film Market’s buyer pool is the place to test that. The market’s own numbers are promotional, and the project platform has published nothing yet.

The next evidence is concrete: whether the festival publishes the missing programme pages before 11 November, which titles the market’s buyers actually take, and the Golden Pyramid result at the closing ceremony on 20 November.

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