Safe Exit heads to El Gouna for Egyptian debut after Berlin launch
Mohammed Hammad's Egyptian thriller Safe Exit is going home. The film is set for its national debut at the El Gouna Film Festival, competing in the Feature Narrative section, according to Variety.
The festival confirmed the selection for its Narrative Competition on 4 October, listing Hammad as writer as well as director, according to the El Gouna Film Festival. It is described as an Egyptian psychological thriller and as Hammad's second fiction feature.
Safe Exit had its world premiere in the Panorama section of the 2026 Berlinale, the Berlin festival's sidebar for new international cinema. The Berlinale archive lists the Panorama screening on 14 Feb. 2026, according to the Berlinale. Marwan Waleed appears in the cast.
The story centres on a security guard living with post-traumatic stress after a 2015 ISIS massacre, a plot outline first reported ahead of the Marrakech industry meetings. The film focuses on three main characters: Samaan, a young Coptic man dealing with trauma, Fatimah, a homeless Muslim woman, and Abdullah, an Islamic terrorist.
It is the follow-up to Hammad's debut feature Withered Green. That film bowed at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival and won the best director prize at the Dubai Film Festival.
He paid for it himself. Hammad said Safe Exit was completely self-funded, and that he and producer Kholoud Saad formed Pariedolia Productions to produce and distribute it. Dora Bouchoucha with Nomadis Images of Tunisia is the main co-producer, while Ibrahim El-Battout is a co-producer and adviser. Production countries associated with the film are Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Qatar and Germany.
The project passed through the Atlas Workshops in Marrakech, the industry programme attached to the Marrakech Film Festival for films in development and post-production. It was included in the Films in Shooting or Post-production lineup and received an Atlas Prize for Post-production at the 2025 edition. The Atlas Post-Production Prize is worth €10,000, according to Atlas Ateliers.
The self-funded route follows a difficult history with an earlier project. Bullets & Bread was developed as a road movie with Film Clinic as a producer, and its script received the Red Sea Lodge Award for an Arab Project in 2020. Hammad said the film was rejected by censors after he had finished the script and was scouting locations.
Hammad said he needs to be free as a film-maker to express his point of view and select the topics he wants to address. On Safe Exit, he said Egyptian censors gave permission to screen the film in festivals within Egypt.
What makes this stand out is the path to the screen. A Berlin launch, a Marrakech post-production prize and a company built to carry one film have led to a home showing. For audiences at El Gouna, it is the first chance to see the film on Egyptian soil.
