Fez — Running from September 25 to October 4, Filmfest Hamburg has confirmed a program that mixes major European premieres with standout titles from the Arab world.
The festival’s official selection features “Aisha Can’t Fly Away” (Morad Mostafa), “The Little Sister (La Petite Dernière)” (Hafsia Herzi), “Cotton Queen” (Suzannah Mirghani), “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” (Tarzan and Arab Nasser), “The President’s Cake” (Hasan Hadi), and “All That’s Left of You” (Cherien Dabis).
Mostafa’s “Aisha Can’t Fly Away” follows a Somali caregiver navigating Cairo’s layered migrant communities, while Herzi’s “The Little Sister” tracks a young Algerian immigrant in France as she tests family expectations and identity. Both films come with strong momentum and expand a recent wave of Arab and diasporic stories in European programs.
From Sudan, “Cotton Queen” centers on Nafisa, a young woman in a cotton-farming village whose life is upended by a newcomer.
The Palestinian twin filmmakers Tarzan and Arab Nasser return with “Once Upon a Time in Gaza,” a period drama first introduced at Cannes that reflects on youth, control, and survival in the enclave.
Two additional selections round out the slate.
Iraq’s “The President’s Cake” follows nine-year-old Lamia, chosen to bake a birthday cake for the head of state, turning a simple task into a tense rite of passage.
Palestinian-American filmmaker Cherien Dabis presents “All That’s Left of You,” a multigenerational family story spanning from 1948 to the present. Both titles underscore the festival’s theme of intimate narratives set against charged political backdrops.
Taken together, the six films map out a broad terrain from coming-of-age to historical memory. Their inclusion at Hamburg signals continued space for Arab cinema on a major European stage and offers German audiences a focused window on new work from Cairo, Khartoum, Gaza, Baghdad, and the diaspora.
