The El Gouna Film Festival reached its fourth day on Sunday, October 18. The morning at Festival Plaza brought panels, forums, and screenings. In the evening, two premieres drew red carpets: Danielle Arbid’s Only Rebels Win and Zaid Abu Hamdan’s Boomah. Together, they showed two very different sides of Arab and regional cinema.
A Morning of Panels at Festival Plaza
The CineGouna Forum anchored the morning. At 1 PM, the CineGouna Theater hosted The Unlikely Hero: Men in the Cinema of Mohamed Khan. Ramy Abdel Razek moderated. Hussein Fahmy, Ahmed Dawood, Nadine Khan and Ahmed Shawky joined him. The session honours the late director and explores how he used imperfect male characters to challenge conventional ideas of masculinity. It also looks at the social and economic circumstances those characters faced.
During the ‘The Future Speaks Arabic’ panel, Youssra emphasized the responsibility of passing down heritage through screen storytelling and guiding artificial intelligence responsibly, while Karim El Shennawy addressed the white gaze and Arab representation in global media
Red Carpet One: Only Rebels Win
Festival Plaza welcomed Danielle Arbid’s Only Rebels Win with a red carpet. The French-Lebanese director’s film premiered at the Berlinale in February, in the Panorama section. It runs 98 minutes and is a co-production between France, Lebanon and Qatar.
The story unfolds in crisis-ridden Beirut. Suzanne, a widow in her sixties with Palestinian roots, meets Osmane, a young undocumented Sudanese man, after saving him from a racist attack. Hiam Abbass plays Suzanne, and Amine Benrachid plays Osmane. As Lebanon edges toward collapse, their love provokes anger around them. Suzanne’s children even stop seeing her.
Arbid is an established festival name. Her earlier features include In the Battlefields, A Lost Man, Parisienne, and Simple Passion. Notably, the last was part of Cannes‘ 2020 Official Selection.
Red Carpet Two: Boomah
At 9:45 PM, a second red carpet welcomed Boomah. Zaid Abu Hamdan wrote and directed the Jordanian crime thriller. It is his second feature after Daughters of Abdul Rahman. The title means “The Owl” in Arabic.
Rakeen Saad, known for the Netflix series AlRawabi School for Girls, plays the title role. Boomah is a notorious, knife-savvy female gang member in Jordan’s underworld. She is caught in a power struggle between street thugs and religious extremists. At the same time, she battles the trauma of an orphaned past. The director says the story explores love, loss, friendship and, above all, motherhood.
Joanna Arida, Majd Eid, Nabil Alraee, Farah Bsieso and Hanan Hillo complete the cast. Front Row Productions, Bounce Productions and Beyt Al Shawareb produced it, with support from the Royal Film Commission Jordan. In addition, it was set to become the first Jordanian feature in the Shanghai International Film Festival‘s competition.
What’s Next
Monday, October 19, brings more red-carpet nights at Festival Plaza. Big Boys Don’t Cry at 7 PM and No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman at 9:30 PM. Cinematographer Lukas Ettlin also gives a masterclass that day. El Gouna Film Festival runs until October 23.
