Aflam Festival

Opening ceremony of the International Film Festival, with director Khaled El Hagar in attendance.
Ghareeb experienced the hardships of Egypt. As a teenager, he lost his father; the year was 1956. In 1967, the year of the war between the Arab armies and Israel, seeing in Gamal Abd El Nasser the image of his late father, he joined the ranks of the resistance in Suez, convinced that victory was near. By Khaled El Haga (Egypt, 1993, 1 hr 20 min) – Fiction World premiere of the restored version. Starring: Mervat Amin, Salah El Saadany, Raga’a Hussein, Seif Abdel Rahman, Tamer Ashraf

A fictional story set amid the cotton fields of Sudan, exploring traditions and change. A screening with director Suzannah Mirghani participating via videoconference.
In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, a teenage girl named Nafisa grows up listening to heroic tales of the struggle against the British colonizers, as told by her grandmother, the village matriarch, Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically modified cotton, Nafisa finds herself at the center of a power struggle that will determine the village’s future. Realizing her own strength, Nafisa embarks on a quest to save the cotton fields—and...

A poetic look at Algiers, following the trail of the jacaranda trees. A screening attended by director Hassen Ferhani.
In Algiers, a writer sets out to create a poetic map of the jacarandas, trees with purple blossoms native to Latin America. His son, a filmmaker, accompanies him on this intimate stroll, during which the father’s stories weave together to form a loving dictionary of the city. Their intertwined perspectives tell the story of a legacy. By Hassen Ferhani (Algeria, France, 2026, 1h18) – Documentary  

In the working-class neighborhoods of Alexandria, at the heart of contemporary working-class Egypt. A screening with Mohamed Rashad in attendance.
After serving a prison sentence for an act of violence committed in defense of his brother, Hossam returns to his working-class neighborhood in Alexandria. To provide for his mother and his younger brother Maro, he takes a job at the factory where their father—who died in tragic circumstances—once worked. While Hossam tries to rebuild his life, Maro secretly harbors a desire for revenge against the man he holds responsible for their father’s death. Caught between guilt, family loyalty, and the...

Three short films to discover through the eyes of young viewers.
This session highlights the project carried out with students from Marseilleveyre Middle School centered on three short films from the festival’s selection. Guided by Mathilde Chèvre, editor at Le Port a Jauni, and Driss El Hachami, an Arabic language teacher, the students explored the films through writing, theater, calligraphy, and a project focusing on the rich shared Arabic heritage underlying these films. With director Omar Rammal in attendance.

From Tripoli, director Rania Rafei brings to life the heart of a story that weaves together personal experiences and collective history; a screening attended by Rania Rafei.
Beginning with the student protests of 1943, the film spans the decades: the pan-Arab hopes of the 1960s, the trauma of the June 1967 War, the divisions caused by the civil war, and the popular anger since 2019 against corruption and sectarianism. Blending archival footage, letters to a missing father, and an exploration of the present, it takes on an open-ended form. Narrated by a voice-over, this chronological journey oscillates between hope and disillusionment, yet reveals a desire for...

A discussion on the distribution and preservation of Arab cinema.
This roundtable brings together three key figures in the circulation and preservation of Arab cinema. Renée Awit, a programmer at Aflamuna—a streaming platform dedicated to Arab cinema—works to make films accessible that are often marginalized by traditional distribution channels. Mohanad Yaqubi, known for his work on the archives of transnational solidarity movements and activist filmmaking practices, will present the Palestine Film Platform, a project of the Palestine Film Institute—which he...

From Family Archives to Collective Memory: A Dialogue on the Work of Ahmed Bouanani.
A Conversation with Touda Bouanani and Marie Pierre-Bouthier. The family’s apartment in Rabat, which was destroyed by a fire in 2006, housed decades of creative work: films, manuscripts, costumes, and photographs by Ahmed Bouanani—a leading Moroccan poet and filmmaker—his wife Naïma Saoudi, and their daughter Batoul. Faced with this loss, visual artist Touda Bouanani chose to resist. Since 2011, she has led efforts to preserve and promote this legacy, which was formally established as an...
The Mirage In Morocco under French protectorate rule, a young farmer discovers a wad of bills hidden in a sack of flour. Hoping to change his life, he leaves his village with his wife and heads to the city to exchange the money. But his journey plunges him into a world populated by con artists, false sages, and enigmatic characters. Straddling the line between dream and reality, *Le Mirage* takes the form of a poetic fable that explores the illusions of progress, power dynamics, and the...

From Morocco to Yemen, a selection of four contemporary short films.
This session explores the connections between memory, history, and creativity through narratives in which places, archives, and images serve as witnesses to individual and collective histories.

A Closer Look at the WarshatAflam Writing Residency.
During this session, three short films developed during previous editions of this residency will be screened in the presence of Aida Kaadan and Ahmed Essam Soliman. This will be an opportunity for these filmmakers to present their films and discuss their experiences and the support they received from Aflam in making their films.

A discussion on the diversity of memories and forgotten cinematic narratives.
A Conversation with Chantal Partamian, Pauline Tucoulet, and Sarah Mounia Kachiri. The history of cinema in the “Arab countries” has been written within the framework of national boundaries inherited from colonial divisions, shaped by narratives that have often erased minority languages and cultures. What, then, becomes of the memory of those whom these official archives render invisible? Armenians, Kurds, Amazighs—all peoples whose images and sounds have been marginalized by a concept of...

A session dedicated to Kurdish cinema, exploring memory, history, and representation.
Kurdish film production in Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava, emerged in the early 2000s, when Kurdish filmmakers such as Ekrem Heydo began shooting on location, with little or no financial resources, and out of sight of the central authorities. His feature-length documentary, *Mein Paradies* (2016), marks a milestone in the transnational history of Kurdish cinema for two reasons. The first is structural in nature, as it documents the mechanisms of co-production and cooperation between production...
My Paradise By Ekrem Heydo (Syria, Germany, 2016, 1 hr 44 min) – Documentary Ever since the Arab Spring reached Syria, a relentless civil war has devastated the city of Serêkaniyê, located on the border between Syria and Turkey. Based on a photograph taken twenty-five years earlier, depicting a few former classmates, the film traces the emergence of the Syrian revolution and the profound impact it has had on their lives and on the country’s history.

Closing ceremony of the International Film Festival.
In *Souraya, My Love*, Nicolas Khoury films Souraya Baghdadi, an actress and the widow of the great Lebanese filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi. Their story begins in 1981 on the set of *Petite Guerre* in Beirut. After Cannes, they settled in Paris. In 1993, while she was expecting their third child, Maroun died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. Thirty years later, Souraya explores his archives, her memories, and her reflections. Through intimate conversations and archival footage, the...