El Gouna's ninth festival closes with a question: where are the scripts?

Egypt's El Gouna Film Festival wrapped its ninth edition on 24 October 2026, according to the festival's own website. The festival opened on 15 October as the first event of the Middle East and North Africa's fall film season, as Deadline reported at the time.

As the closing days approached, producers and filmmakers used the event to discuss what the country's industry needs to turn talent into films that find audiences at home and abroad. Producer Mohamed Mashish put it bluntly. Egypt has the parts of an industry, he said, but it lacks scripts, and it needs more time for development and writing. Mashish produced the 2016 drama Grand Hotel. When it went out internationally as Secret of the Nile in 2018, it became the first Egyptian and first Arabic-language series on Netflix, Variety reported.

The numbers behind that debate are steep. Egypt made 112 films in 1988, according to figures from the Egyptian Chamber of Cinema Industry cited by Variety. A decade later the count had fallen to 16. Output has since climbed back. Feature production rose from 51 films in 2022 to 67 in 2023, Variety reported.

Director Hadi El Bagoury, whose 2016 film Hepta: The Last Lecture became the highest-grossing romantic film in Egyptian cinema, said streaming services have given filmmakers more places to show their work. They have also exposed audiences to a wider range of films. Mashish added that Saudi and Gulf audiences have become more selective since cinemas opened there, and they now expect international-quality films.

The festival also handed out its own awards. Sixteen projects shared the CineGouna Funding programme, which offers financial and service support worth more than $350,000 in total, the festival said. Fares El Tabey won the third Eish Short Film Competition with the concept Between Two Shores. The festival also extended its partnership with Zawya Cinema in Cairo for a fourth year, so that festival films can reach audiences in the capital. Al Nahar TV renewed its role as official broadcast partner, keeping the broadcast rights.

Leadership is changing too. Andrew Mohsen will take over as festival chief from the Egyptian filmmaker Marianne Khoury, who stepped down in February after heading three editions, Variety reported in April. The festival has a rocky recent past. Its 2022 edition was cancelled, as Variety noted in a 2024 piece on the festival.

The festival's message is that talent is not the missing piece. Writers, developers and funders are the links that need strengthening, and the people in the room said so openly. The next steps will show up in the scripts that reach production in the coming years.