As part of the 46th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), held from 12 to 21 November 2025, a panel titled Arab-Led Content: Crossing Borders, Sharing Stories brought together four figures whose paths differ widely yet complement one another in essential ways. Together, they explored a question that now lies at the heart of Arab cinema’s global ambitions: how can Arab stories travel, overcome cultural and linguistic borders, and claim a meaningful place on the international stage?
The conversation featured Mohamed Hefzy, a screenwriter with more than forty scripts to his name and one of the most influential producers in contemporary Arab cinema. His experience is multifaceted: writing, producing, navigating industry structures and, importantly, understanding international networks — knowledge sharpened by his four years as president of the Cairo International Film Festival.
Alongside him sat Shahinaz El Akkad, founder of Lagoonie Film Production in Egypt. In just a few years, her company has become a central force in regional production, supporting commercial titles, auteur cinema and independent voices with a consistent commitment to professionalism and to stories rooted in the social and cultural fabric of the country.
The panel also welcomed Ola Salama, a key figure in Palestinian cinema and head of Lab Palestine, an initiative that supports emerging filmmakers in a context where filmmaking is an act of perseverance in itself. Lab Palestine provides equipment, workspaces, production and post-production support — often the only lifeline available for writers and directors working under extreme constraints.
Finally, Saudi producer Rasha Al Emam offered the perspective of an industry undergoing rapid transformation. With the Saudi film sector still young — its first Cannes selection dates back to 2024 — she represents a generation building an ambitious and fast-growing ecosystem, supported by significant state investment.
Moderated by Mohamed Nabil, the discussion quickly turned into an in-depth exploration of how Arab stories can resonate beyond their borders.
Hefzy was the first to address the relationship between Arab films and international festivals. Arab filmmakers naturally hope to see their films travel, he said, but any international ambition must begin with a strong local grounding. A film can only reach audiences abroad if it speaks truthfully about its own world — its culture, its social realities, its emotional landscape. Attempting to tailor a film for foreign viewers, or diluting its identity, inevitably undermines its authenticity, and authenticity is what makes a film travel.
Festivals do matter, he added, but they should never be the driving force behind a project. An independent film — one made with complete artistic freedom — must first exist for its own audience, within its own market. Festivals come later, as amplifiers rather than objectives.
El Akkad immediately echoed this view. For her, a film rooted in a specific lived reality naturally holds the potential to interest the world. Arab cinema has already crossed borders, she noted; the issue today is not to begin this journey but to consolidate it and to keep strengthening the presence of Arab films abroad.
This emphasis on authenticity aligns with reflections I had developed several years ago in an article published on Webdo.tn, “Le cinéma arabe à la conquête du public européen ?”. I argued then that universality is not a strategy but a by-product of particularity: a story from Cairo, Beirut, Ramallah, Tunis or Jeddah can only resonate abroad if it resonates first at home. What Hefzy and El Akkad describe perfectly illustrates this idea.
Ola Salama then offered a perspective shaped by the daily realities of Palestinian filmmaking. Palestinian directors face structural barriers at every stage: no real industry, no stable infrastructure, scarce financing and an environment where every production faces logistical and political obstacles. Yet, despite all this, young filmmakers continue to write, to imagine, to insist on telling their stories.
Lab Palestine supports them as best it can, but foreign financing often comes with conditions. Salama shared a concrete example: some funders ask filmmakers to remove the word “martyr” — a term central to many Palestinian narratives. Such constraints, she said, are unacceptable, and Lab Palestine’s mission is precisely to protect artistic freedom and preserve the integrity of Palestinian storytelling.
She also underscored a major shift: since 7 October 2023, global demand for Palestinian films has surged. Audiences worldwide want to see Palestinians on screen, to understand their lives, their reality, their history — no longer through external filters, but through their own voices.
This surge reshaped the trajectory of Palestine Cinema Days, whose 10th edition, scheduled for late October 2023, could not take place. The team instead reinvented it as a dispersed festival held across dozens of countries. The results were unprecedented: over one hundred screenings in 2023, more than four hundred in 2024, and over one thousand in 2025. Japan alone requested 160 screenings; Germany held 41 despite a tense political climate. It is a phenomenon without precedent, signalling a deep, global appetite for Palestinian stories.
Rasha Al Emam then brought the perspective of a country where financial support is not the primary issue. Saudi Arabia invests heavily in film, giving creators favourable conditions. Yet the industry remains young, influenced by commercial pressures, cultural expectations, and institutional priorities. Navigating these influences can be difficult and sometimes compromises emerge. But for her, as for the others, authenticity remains the core condition for a film’s success — both at home and abroad.
The conversation then shifted toward one of the biggest challenges Arab cinema faces today: international distribution. Distributors rarely take risks unless a film has already earned significant acclaim at a major festival. Yet 2025 has shown encouraging signs: three films centred on the Palestinian cause, directed by women — Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, Annemarie Jacir’s “Palestine 36” and Cherien Dabis’s “What Remains of Us” — have reached prestigious festivals, suggesting that audiences and institutions are increasingly prepared to welcome these narratives.
Still, attracting foreign industry figures to Arab festivals remains difficult. Hefzy recalled that when he first contacted Variety and The Hollywood Reporter as CIFF president, their immediate question was: “Do you have world premieres?” The demand for exclusivity reveals how festivals operate: visibility depends not only on quality but on novelty.
Audience questions then steered the panel toward another crucial issue: language and subtitling. To travel, a film must be accessible. Platforms give the illusion of global reach, yet most Arab productions are under-subtitled or subtitled only in Arabic or English — insufficient for true international circulation. Paradoxically, many Arab platforms offer foreign content with high-quality English subtitles while neglecting multilingual subtitling for Arab films themselves. In a world shaped by streaming, a poorly subtitled film effectively does not exist for foreign viewers.
The panel then touched on a symbolic example of these structural barriers: the near absence of Arab films at the Oscars. To stand a chance, a film needs a U.S. distributor, a costly promotional campaign and a major festival premiere. With over ninety submissions each year in the International Feature category, voters cannot watch everything; they watch what is promoted. As Hefzy noted, this is unfair — but it is how the system works. Coproductions, therefore, become strategic: they bring financial support and crucial access to distribution networks.
A final delicate topic emerged: the constraints sometimes imposed by foreign partners and the phenomenon of self-censorship. Some funders demand changes; others not. Some directors accept; others refuse. Hefzy noted that he personally has never been pressured, but acknowledged that self-censorship exists, driven by commercial instincts or strategic caution, sometimes stronger than external influence.
Asked about her many films centred on women, El Akkad clarified that she never chooses a film for its theme but for the emotional response it creates in her. Films win awards, she said, when they are sincere — profoundly and uncompromisingly so. She also drew a sharp distinction between commercial cinema, where decisions depend on many stakeholders, and independent cinema, where choice springs from the desire of the author and the producer alone.
As the session drew to a close, a shared conviction emerged: for Arab films to cross borders, they must continue to tell their own stories, shaped by their own realities. Authenticity is not an obstacle — it is the very condition for universality.
Yet this raises broader questions. How can Arab filmmakers maintain this authenticity in a landscape where platforms redefine territories and where visibility still depends on foreign distributors, festival politics and sometimes incomplete subtitling? How can international demand — especially for Palestinian cinema — avoid turning into a form of expectation, pushing certain narratives at the expense of others?
Perhaps the challenge now is not only to “cross borders”, but to transform how these borders are imagined. Arab cinema can reveal complexity, tenderness, memory, humour, anger and joy — all the textures of life in the region. It can surprise, shift perspectives, and break expected patterns.
The next step may lie here: not proving that Arab cinema can travel, but demonstrating that it can do so in all its diversity, without conforming, without self-censorship, without shaping itself around what foreign markets expect. And so a final question emerges: which Arab stories have yet to be told precisely because we once believed they would not matter beyond our borders?
Neïla Driss
