Two Emirati Films Compete at Sharjah's Children and Youth Festival
Two Emirati features are the only local films in competition at the 13th Sharjah International Film Festival for Children and Youth, and one of them opened the event. Khalid Al Mahmood's musical The Mangrove House had its world premiere as the opening film, Variety reports. The second is Abdulrahman Al Madani's family drama Oug.
The festival runs from 25 October to 1 November 2026 at City Centre Al Zahia in Sharjah. Its programme includes 71 films from 38 countries, according to Egypt Today.
The Mangrove House started its journey in a pitch room. Al Mahmood presented it at the festival's first Film Pitching Session last year, when he was looking for post-production support. Post-production is the stage after filming, where editing, sound and visual effects are finished. The festival's parent organisation, FANN – Media Discovery Platform, backed the film after that session.
Oug comes with a longer festival history. It is Al Madani's third film to screen at the Sharjah festival, after Nagafa in 2015 and Laymoon in 2019. The film received a grant from the UAE Ministry of Culture.
Al Madani has also started a project aimed at short films. He launched Meylas Aflam, a screening initiative meant to give Emirati shorts a life beyond their festival runs. Short films often screen at a handful of events and then disappear, so the aim is to keep them in front of audiences for longer.
For a children and youth festival, the pitching route matters. A project that gets support in a meeting room can end up on a festival screen a year later. Both Emirati films in competition sit at the end of that kind of chain, and the festival runs until 1 November.
