Arab Voices at the 45th Istanbul Film Festival

New Arab cinema at the 45th Istanbul Film Festival reflected a cinema of unease and resistance, where questions of identity, exile, fragility, and memory took precedence over certainty. Egyptian critic Mohamed Nabil examines four films that reveal an Arab cinematic landscape increasingly shaped by formal experimentation and emotional vulnerability.

The 45th edition of the Istanbul Film Festival was not merely a showcase of films; it felt more like a test of cinema’s resilience in a deeply unsettled global moment—one where politics intersect with aesthetics, and reality collides with forms of expression that lean toward confrontation. Within this charged atmosphere, Arab cinema did not appear as a guest or an exception, but as an integral part of the festival’s fabric.

Four notable films stood out in the 2026 program, suggesting that a distinct Arab voice is taking shape—still restless, yet more daring than ever before.

At the heart of the international Golden Tulip Competition was Only Rebels Win by Danielle Arbid, the sole representative of the region, following its premiere earlier this year in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. The film grants women the right to embody vulnerability, rejecting the conventional image of the “strong woman.” It engages, albeit indirectly, with themes of identity, belonging, love, and freedom. However, it occasionally falls into the trap of overt messaging, as if striving to appeal to festival circuits more than to deeply interrogate its own reality.

Outside the competition, Chronicles From the Siege by Abdallah Al-Khatib, also arriving from Berlin, stands as an extension of resistance cinema—films not driven purely by aesthetic ambition, but born from within the wound itself. Stories from refugee camps are no longer new in themselves; the real challenge lies in how to revisit suffering without reproducing it.

The film moves closer to the details, betting on authenticity, and succeeds in creating a deeply human and overwhelming experience. It deliberately avoids specifying time, place, or the exact parties involved in the conflict, suggesting that whenever a group of people are trapped and deprived of normal life, the inevitable outcome is a mixture of pain, despair, and the persistent pursuit of hope.

The Egyptian presence at the festival came this year following a screening at Cannes—an important detail that cannot be overlooked. Major festivals do not merely offer a platform; they reshape how a film is later received. The narrative feature Aisha Can’t Fly Away from director Morad Mostafa carries a title that encapsulates the condition of an entire generation.

The inability here is not abstract; it raises a direct question: why can’t Aisha fly? What makes the very act of flying impossible? The film belongs to a kind of cinema that focuses on everyday fragility—on small details that accumulate until they form a larger crisis.

In a previous interview, Mostafa noted that the film draws on his personal experience observing a large community of African migrants, aiming to shed light on lives often overlooked in Egyptian cinema.

Meanwhile, Namir Abdel Messeeh’s documentary Life After Seham (La vie après Siham, 2025) confronts loss head-on. In recent years, Arab documentary filmmaking has increasingly leaned toward the personal and the intimate, transforming individual experiences into broader reflections. Yet the risk always lies in slipping into pure sentimentality. A strong documentary knows how to maintain distance—how to allow the viewer to discover pain, rather than imposing it.

What unites these four films is not their subject matter or style, but a shared sense of unease—an anxiety in form, in narrative, and in their relationship with the world.

This is precisely what makes their presence in Istanbul both significant and impactful. Historically, the festival has been a space for voices still searching for their identity, rather than those that have already found it. This edition may not offer a clear answer about the current position of Arab cinema, but it raises a more important question: are we witnessing the emergence of a new wave rethinking its tools, or merely a continuation of the same cycles?