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Films: stories, characters & cast
Stories, characters and the people behind Arab cinema. Explore our film profiles by country, with information checked against festival records and official press materials.
Algeria
2019Papicha
Friendship, fashion and the fight for independence in 1990s Algiers.
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1975Chronicle of the Years of Fire
One family’s story within Algeria’s long passage towards independence.
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2022The Last Queen
A queen’s struggle at the meeting point of Algerian history and legend.
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1966The Battle of Algiers
A city becomes the contested ground of Algeria’s struggle for independence from French colonial rule.
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1976Omar Gatlato
Music, friendship and romantic hesitation fill a young man’s days in post-independence Algiers.
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1966The Winds of the Aurès
A mother’s search carries the history of war into the intimate world of a rural family.
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Rachida
A schoolteacher tries to recover a daily life after violence makes her classroom a target.
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2008Masquerades
An invented engagement turns a village’s hunger for prestige into an increasingly complicated family comedy.
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2009Harragas
Young people preparing a clandestine sea crossing place their hopes on the uncertain distance to Spain.
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The Blessed
Two generations move through the same Algiers night with different memories and expectations of the city.
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2017Until the Birds Return
Three lives at turning points reveal the uneasy relationship between private choices and a shared past.
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2019Abou Leila
Two childhood friends cross the Sahara on a search that brings their own fear and fragility into view.
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Délice Paloma
An Algiers fixer’s ambitions draw family, money and a new recruit into the same precarious enterprise.
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Tunisia
2016Hedi
A young Tunisian man begins to question a future chosen for him.
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1994The Silences of the Palace
A singer returns to her childhood home and the lives hidden beneath its grandeur.
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A Summer in La Goulette
Three friends test the boundaries of love, family and religion in a seaside neighbourhood.
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As I Open My Eyes
A young singer claims her voice in Tunis on the eve of political upheaval.
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2017Beauty and the Dogs
One young woman’s night becomes a struggle to have her testimony heard and respected.
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The Man Who Sold His Skin
A refugee’s route to the woman he loves passes through the international art market.
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Under the Fig Trees
A summer harvest becomes a meeting place for work, attraction and conversations between generations.
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Dear Son
A father’s carefully ordered life falters when his only child becomes increasingly difficult to reach.
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Ashkal
Two investigators follow a trail of fire through unfinished buildings and unresolved political history.
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Buried Secrets
Three secluded women find their fragile domestic world disturbed by the arrival of strangers.
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Dachra
A student investigation takes three friends from a forgotten crime to an isolated village.
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Morocco
2022The Blue Caftan
Craft, marriage and unspoken desire in a Moroccan caftan workshop.
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2012Horses of God
Childhood, brotherhood and the path towards violent extremism.
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Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets
Four boys, a dream of the sea and a friendship tested on Casablanca’s streets.
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Casanegra
Two childhood friends pursue a way out as the city draws them into another risky deal.
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Much Loved
Friendship and daily survival among women whose work makes them both desired and condemned.
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2019Adam
A bakery, an unexpected guest and the gradual beginnings of trust between two women.
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2021Casablanca Beats
A hip-hop class becomes a place for young people to try out their own voices.
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Razzia
Five lives connected by a city, a past and the desire to choose their own direction.
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Volubilis
A newly married couple hopes for a home of its own amid unequal lives in Meknes.
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Hounds
A father and son accept a criminal errand that draws them into a long Casablanca night.
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The Unknown Saint
A thief returns for buried money and finds his hiding place has acquired devoted visitors.
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Mimosas
An uncertain mountain route becomes a journey through trust, obligation and the limits of belief.
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Jordan
2014Theeb
A boy follows his brother into the desert, where hospitality becomes a test of survival.
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2021The Alleys
A secret romance and a blackmail video unsettle the fragile balance of an East Amman neighbourhood.
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2021Farha
A Palestinian girl’s hopes for an education confront the violence reaching her village in 1948.
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2023Inshallah a Boy
A sudden bereavement turns a mother’s home and future into a struggle over inheritance.
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Blessed Benefit
An ordinary worker’s prison sentence prompts an unexpected reassessment of the pressures waiting beyond its walls.
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Captain Abu Raed
A discarded pilot’s cap turns an airport cleaner into a neighbourhood storyteller with an unexpected responsibility.
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Saudi Arabia
- 2012
Wadjda
A green bicycle becomes the focus of a young girl’s determination to choose her own adventures.
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The Perfect Candidate
A doctor’s campaign to repair the road to her clinic grows into an unexpected political challenge.
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Barakah Meets Barakah
Two young people from different social worlds try to find a place for romance in Jeddah.
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Norah
A young woman and a newly arrived teacher discover a shared language through the desire to create.
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Lebanon
- 2018
Capernaum
A child's search for care and dignity among the overlooked lives of Beirut.
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Caramel
A Beirut beauty salon becomes a meeting place for friendship, desire and difficult choices.
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Where Do We Go Now?
Women in an isolated village join forces to keep religious tensions from becoming violence.
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The Insult
A dispute between two men in Beirut exposes the weight of memory and public prejudice.
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West Beirut
Three teenagers try to preserve the freedoms of youth as civil war divides their city.
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Palestine
- 2013
Omar
Love and friendship become fragile commitments in a thriller about trust under occupation.
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Paradise Now
Two friends confront a planned act of violence and the beliefs that brought them towards it.
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Wajib
Delivering wedding invitations becomes a day of disagreement and rediscovery for a father and son.
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The Time That Remains
Family memories connect four periods of Palestinian life, from 1948 into a later generation.
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It Must Be Heaven
A quiet traveller discovers unexpected echoes of Palestine in Paris and New York.
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