Arab Cinema Week Vol. 5

How do we organize the fragments of our collective memory? If the cinema screen is the ultimate archive, then the films we project are our most vital documents. Cinema Akil proudly presents the 5th edition of Arab Cinema Week, running from the 5th to the 11th of June 2026. Marking a half-decade of celebrating our region's cinematic pulse, this year’s curation features 9 feature films from 7 Arab countries. With these films, we try to create a mosaic of feelings, histories, and shared joys and pains of our times. 

At the very heart of this year’s program is a dedicated focus on Lebanese cinema, a landscape that has long served as a vital, breathing record of a nation’s ongoing negotiation with memory, conflict, and survival. We explore how the past is meticulously reassembled through the moving image, inviting our audiences to experience this through two distinctly brilliant approaches. In Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me, we are swept into a pulsating, seventy-year audiovisual love letter to Beirut, a kaleidoscopic journey that dares us to decipher the secrets hidden within the city's salvaged cinematic forgotten archives. With intimate contrast, Nicolas Khoury’s Souraya, Mon Amour pulls us into the shadows of personal memory; we follow actress Souraya Baghdadi as she confronts the cinematic ghosts of her late husband—pioneering filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi—in a haunting quest to reclaim her own voice from the heavy legacy of civil war cinema. Anchoring this historical reflection in the immediate present is Cyril Aris’s A Sad and Beautiful World. Spanning three decades of love and endurance against the backdrop of Beirut’s contemporary turmoil, the film serves as a vital counterweight. Together, these works prove that whether piecing together the shattered archives of the past or navigating the uncertainties of today, Lebanese cinema remains a powerful compass for survival, agency, and hope.

Expanding outward, this edition leans deeply into the intimate architecture of the household, recognizing the family as the primary stage where the heavy legacies of modern history play out. In My Father and Qaddafi, directed by Jihan K., we witness a gripping personal reckoning, unpacking the profound generational weight and hidden secrets that a father's political entanglement leaves on a family's identity. In an emotional contrast, Zain Duraie’s Sink submerges us into the quiet, often claustrophobic domestic sphere, beautifully mapping the delicate thresholds of survival, duty, and human longing behind closed doors.

Our gaze also shifts towards Sudan, a nation whose cinematic narrative remains as vital and urgent as ever. Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen takes us to the heart of the cotton fields, capturing the unbreakable spirit of youth navigating the lingering, complex shadows of a colonial past. Alongside it, the collaborative powerhouse documentary Khartoum crafted by an innovative collective of Sudanese and international filmmakers including Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Anas Saeed, Timeea M. Ahmed, Yousef Jubeh, and Phil Cox strips away the grand, abstract narratives of current war, and offers a grounded, unflinching excavation of the city's roots and its people to better understand the turbulent realities of its present.

To close the program, we explore how the weight of the state and the intimacy of the home are translated through entirely distinct visual languages. Hasan Hadi’s The President's Cake drops us into the harsh sanctions of 1990s Iraq, unfolding as a surreal Alice in Wonderland fable of survival. Bathed in a meticulous and nostalgic carte postale aesthetic, the film uses the innocent gaze of childhood to deliver a brilliant, biting critique of authoritarian absurdity.

Pulling us from the surreal back into the deeply personal, Maryam Touzani’s Calle Malaga serves as a masterclass in emotional archaeology. Set against the radiant, intoxicating backdrop of Tangier, the city itself becomes a living character pulsing with memory and stubborn devotion. Drawing inspiration from the life of her own grandmother, Touzani maps an intimate matriarchal journey anchored by the spellbinding presence of the legendary Carmen Maura. It is a tender exploration of memory and exile, tracing the invisible threads that bind us to the streets of a city we simply refuse to leave behind.

Talk To Strangers, Cinema Akil’s new social event, joins Arab Cinema Week for the first time this year. Following the last screening of A Sad And A Beautiful World, audiences are invited to linge for conversation, connection, and perhaps a new friendship or two.

Together, these films represent a daring and sophisticated evolution in Arab storytelling, seamlessly blending fiction, documentary, and the spaces in between. They remind us that whether we are uncovering buried histories or finding quiet resilience in the face of adversity, our voices remain rich, varied, and uncompromising. Arab Cinema Week is more than just a festival, It is an active reclamation of our shared humanity and a testament to the fact that cinematic language knows no boundaries.

Join us throughout the week for screenings, engaging filmmaker Q&As, and vital conversations that dismantle the wall between the cinema screen and our lived realities.

Tickets and season passes for the 5th edition are now available.