Spotlight on New Voices of Arab Women Directors: A Journey from the Self to the World
by Omnia Adel
When I started as a FIPRESCI jury member at the 8th El Gouna Film Festival, I noticed the large number of films (four out of the seven in competition) made by new Arab women directors: Happy Birthday (2025) by Egyptian director Sarah Goher; 50 Meters (2025), the first film by Egyptian director Youmna Khattab; Love Imagined (2025) by Egyptian director Sarah Rozik; and the Tunisian film Where the Wind Comes From (2025) by Amel Gellaty. We also saw three other strong films, including Always (Deming Chen, 2025) which won the FIPRESCI Award for its artistic quality.
Each of the four female-directed films mentioned above shows a special view of women’s thoughts and energy on Arab screens. This helps us to understand many cinematic ideas in the Arab world, especially in societies that are changing quickly. Even though the films in question are different in genre, themes and story styles, they all show a clear female influence within their filmmaking, including the subjects they choose and the kinds of characters they create.
50 Meters, the only documentary among the four, is a personal story. Youmna Khattab explores her father’s male world, focusing on his swimming exercise with his friends at the club. She also shows her struggles and worries about her future, which might be linked to past expectations, especially from her father, who is her role model.
Khattab talks about her worries carefully, especially around her father, to avoid getting direct advice. She looks for intimate moments with him in his private space to feel safe. Interestingly, her father has modern ideas; he rejects words like “panic” and says motherhood is a choice, not a social obligation. He even admits that he wished he hadn’t been a father. Such honesty makes us think deeply about the future and living in the moment, instead of worrying about tomorrow.
Visually, 50 Meters moves from Khattab’s father’s world to the director’s own, through archival footage he filmed of her. This shift shows the difference between the “Father’s Yumna” visible in old pictures and the present-day woman who wants to be open and real, not just perform well, unlike in her childhood videos. A common point made within 50 Meters and the other Arab female-directed films it showed in competition alongside is the presence of an external “Other” within many women’s lives. In Khattab’s film, male characters’ authority (her father and his friends) is clear in their comments. The director wants to film her father as she saw him, taking the camera to present her ideas.
In Happy Birthday, Sarah Goher focuses on social differences in Egyptian society through the character of Touha, a small girl who learns about the adult world by wishing on a birthday candle to join a new family. The film struggles to give a clear and believable reason for how an eight-year-old girl ends up working as a maid for the wealthy family. Touha cares about the candle, not the cake’s taste, because she believes it will make her wish come true, based on what the daughter of the rich family tells her.
The film’s dramatic structure is weak because too reliant on coincidence; a yet-bigger issue, however, is that the script seems to use its narrative events to push the director’s ideas, and thus forgetting to adhere to and respect Touha’s innocent, because childlike, viewpoint. In one pivotal scene, Touha does things that seem too grown-up for a child who has been rejected, simply to create a sad and dramatic ending for the film itself. Goher’s perspective, which is that of a filmmaker living in the US, may have impacted her understanding of the reality of life for the contemporary Egyptian poor.;
More positively, the performances of lead actors Doha Ramadan and Hanan Motawie are strong and Goher shows skill and ability, especially for a first film, in controlling Happy Birthday’s pace from start to finish. Despite the script issues noted above, the director successfully keeps her viewer interested throughout and maintains the story’s flow.
Sarah Rozik’s Love Imagined shares the lively feeling and energy of 50 Meters and Happy Birthday. This film explores the possibilities and pleasures, often physical movement-based, of the Musical genre, a comparatively rare presence within Egyptian cinema. Influenced by films like La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016), the poster for which is pointedly visible in lead character Nouh’s bedroom., Love Imagined’s story is about three characters looking for comfort: Nouh, a dreamer, who starts a fantasy love story after his girlfriend Warda rejects him to focus on her career, and Dr. Youssef, who returns home from Germany and lives with a statue of his dead wife. Although Rozik’s film is somewhat commercial, it nonetheless offers a fresh voice and different vision within Egyptian cinema in a joyful way. In the end, the characters find comfort in love, realizing their relationships were a way to heal and understand what they need.
Away from the three Egyptian films, Tunisian director Amel Gellaty’s Where the Wind Comes From shows another heroine who, like Youmna Khattab in 50 Meters, faces the influence of an external “Other”: in this Gellaty’s film’s case, Fate itself. Nineteen-year-old lead character Alissa lives her life by rebelling against rules, treating her destiny as an enemy. Her fierce spirit is clear in the film’s quick pace. Alissa is arguably the most consistent central protagonist of the four films discussed here, with her actions always matching her inner feelings. But the key point about Where the Wind Comes From’s heroine is that shefinds peace not through total rebellion, but through love and returning to her roots. Alissa ends her journey by accepting her past and current life. This is a new way to grow up, where accepting reality becomes necessary instead of reckless revolt.
The shared prominence and respective achievements of women directors in the 2025 FIPRESCI competition at El Gouna is just a small part of a larger cinematic movement Egypt witnessed in 2024, which was clearly “The Year of the Women Directors”. In 2023, there was a domestic production boom (42 films) but only one directed by a woman. By contrast, 2024 saw twelve films—fiction and documentary—out of a total of 43 domestic features, plus many short films, directed by women.
The rise of Arab women directors offers close and honest views on power dynamics and female roles within these filmmakers’ home countries. Looking at the four films this festival report discusses, we see a gradual progression in understanding women’s spaces. Such evolving understanding incorporates deep intimacy in 50 Meters, moves to realities of social class in Happy Birthday, and then expands to youthful searching for identity and freedom in Love Imagined and Where the Wind Comes From.
The different types and generations of female characters (mature adult in 50 Meters, innocent child in Happy Birthday, and freedom-searching youths in Love Imagined and Where the Wind Comes From) proves that the rhythm of this generation’s debut works involves not just technical skill, but also the ability to show the complex and varied nature of female experience in Arab cinema.
Omnia Adel
©FIPRESCI 2025