CineGouna Funding Hands Out $350,000 to Arab Film Projects
Arab film projects shared more than $350,000 in cash and services at CineGouna Funding, the film-financing arm of the El Gouna Film Festival on Egypt's Red Sea coast, Variety reported. The ninth edition of the festival runs through October 23, 2026.
The prizes went to 16 of the 19 projects taking part, with 40 awards in total. Among the winners, Zoulikha Tahar's "Paradise Beach" took a $15,000 CineGouna award for a project still in development, the stage where a script and financing are being put together before any filming. The project had earlier been selected for Berlinale Talents, the training programme linked to the Berlin International Film Festival.
Rama Abdy's documentary "House No. 7" won the $15,000 CineGouna Platform Award. It follows three women building a refuge in Damascus, and it is in post-production, the editing and sound stage that comes after shooting.
Marwa Zein's "Lily's Makkah" also drew support. It is her first fiction feature since "Khartoum Offside," and it received a €10,000 grant, post-production help and an invitation to Durban FilmMart, a market where sales agents and buyers meet film teams.
The projects also held more than 140 one-on-one meetings with companies, institutions and international festivals. For a film-maker, these meetings are often where a project moves from an idea on paper to a film with a distributor or a co-producer in another country.
CineGouna this year created Egyptian Voices, a new strand that gives four more Egyptian projects training in pitching, which means selling an idea in a few minutes, along with packaging, the work of assembling a finished plan for investors, and co-production, where film-makers in two or more countries share money and credit.
The fund drew heavy interest. More than 320 Arab film projects applied in 2026, and more than 100 of them came from Egypt. Submissions had opened ahead of the festival in April, according to Broadcast Pro Middle East.
The head of CineGouna Funding, Ahmed Shawky, is a film critic and festival programmer. He named three gaps he sees across the Arab world. Many countries have no national film fund, co-production treaties between countries are limited, and regional funding can swing sharply from year to year. Those gaps help explain why a fund of this kind matters to film-makers who have to look abroad for money.
CineGouna Emerge, a separate programme for newer film people, adds to the picture. Hayat Aljowaily, an Egyptian film-maker, producer and programmer, leads it. More than 300 people have passed through Emerge so far. The 2026 group spans 16 nationalities and includes Egyptians from 20 of Egypt's 27 governorates, the administrative regions.
For the film-makers in the room, the week's practical result is a set of deadlines, meetings and small cheques. For the projects, the next step is the slow work of finishing a film and finding a screen, which can take years.
